Combining High-Resolution Imaging, Deep Learning, and Dynamic Modeling to Separate Disease and Senescence in Wheat Canopies

Maintenance of sufficiently healthy green leaf area after anthesis is key to ensuring an adequate assimilate supply for grain filling. Tightly regulated age-related physiological senescence and various biotic and abiotic stressors drive overall greenness decay dynamics under field conditions. Beside...

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Main Authors: Jonas Anderegg, Radek Zenkl, Achim Walter, Andreas Hund, Bruce A. McDonald
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2023-01-01
Series:Plant Phenomics
Online Access:https://spj.science.org/doi/10.34133/plantphenomics.0053
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author Jonas Anderegg
Radek Zenkl
Achim Walter
Andreas Hund
Bruce A. McDonald
author_facet Jonas Anderegg
Radek Zenkl
Achim Walter
Andreas Hund
Bruce A. McDonald
author_sort Jonas Anderegg
collection DOAJ
description Maintenance of sufficiently healthy green leaf area after anthesis is key to ensuring an adequate assimilate supply for grain filling. Tightly regulated age-related physiological senescence and various biotic and abiotic stressors drive overall greenness decay dynamics under field conditions. Besides direct effects on green leaf area in terms of leaf damage, stressors often anticipate or accelerate physiological senescence, which may multiply their negative impact on grain filling. Here, we present an image processing methodology that enables the monitoring of chlorosis and necrosis separately for ears and shoots (stems + leaves) based on deep learning models for semantic segmentation and color properties of vegetation. A vegetation segmentation model was trained using semisynthetic training data generated using image composition and generative adversarial neural networks, which greatly reduced the risk of annotation uncertainties and annotation effort. Application of the models to image time series revealed temporal patterns of greenness decay as well as the relative contributions of chlorosis and necrosis. Image-based estimation of greenness decay dynamics was highly correlated with scoring-based estimations (r ≈ 0.9). Contrasting patterns were observed for plots with different levels of foliar diseases, particularly septoria tritici blotch. Our results suggest that tracking the chlorotic and necrotic fractions separately may enable (a) a separate quantification of the contribution of biotic stress and physiological senescence on overall green leaf area dynamics and (b) investigation of interactions between biotic stress and physiological senescence. The high-throughput nature of our methodology paves the way to conducting genetic studies of disease resistance and tolerance.
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spelling doaj.art-808b9bfd7be34c04b342d90a850f2c022023-08-25T17:33:51ZengAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)Plant Phenomics2643-65152023-01-01510.34133/plantphenomics.0053Combining High-Resolution Imaging, Deep Learning, and Dynamic Modeling to Separate Disease and Senescence in Wheat CanopiesJonas Anderegg0Radek Zenkl1Achim Walter2Andreas Hund3Bruce A. McDonald4Plant Pathology Group, Institute of Integrative Biology, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.Plant Pathology Group, Institute of Integrative Biology, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.Crop Science Group, Institute of Agricultural Sciences, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.Crop Science Group, Institute of Agricultural Sciences, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.Plant Pathology Group, Institute of Integrative Biology, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.Maintenance of sufficiently healthy green leaf area after anthesis is key to ensuring an adequate assimilate supply for grain filling. Tightly regulated age-related physiological senescence and various biotic and abiotic stressors drive overall greenness decay dynamics under field conditions. Besides direct effects on green leaf area in terms of leaf damage, stressors often anticipate or accelerate physiological senescence, which may multiply their negative impact on grain filling. Here, we present an image processing methodology that enables the monitoring of chlorosis and necrosis separately for ears and shoots (stems + leaves) based on deep learning models for semantic segmentation and color properties of vegetation. A vegetation segmentation model was trained using semisynthetic training data generated using image composition and generative adversarial neural networks, which greatly reduced the risk of annotation uncertainties and annotation effort. Application of the models to image time series revealed temporal patterns of greenness decay as well as the relative contributions of chlorosis and necrosis. Image-based estimation of greenness decay dynamics was highly correlated with scoring-based estimations (r ≈ 0.9). Contrasting patterns were observed for plots with different levels of foliar diseases, particularly septoria tritici blotch. Our results suggest that tracking the chlorotic and necrotic fractions separately may enable (a) a separate quantification of the contribution of biotic stress and physiological senescence on overall green leaf area dynamics and (b) investigation of interactions between biotic stress and physiological senescence. The high-throughput nature of our methodology paves the way to conducting genetic studies of disease resistance and tolerance.https://spj.science.org/doi/10.34133/plantphenomics.0053
spellingShingle Jonas Anderegg
Radek Zenkl
Achim Walter
Andreas Hund
Bruce A. McDonald
Combining High-Resolution Imaging, Deep Learning, and Dynamic Modeling to Separate Disease and Senescence in Wheat Canopies
Plant Phenomics
title Combining High-Resolution Imaging, Deep Learning, and Dynamic Modeling to Separate Disease and Senescence in Wheat Canopies
title_full Combining High-Resolution Imaging, Deep Learning, and Dynamic Modeling to Separate Disease and Senescence in Wheat Canopies
title_fullStr Combining High-Resolution Imaging, Deep Learning, and Dynamic Modeling to Separate Disease and Senescence in Wheat Canopies
title_full_unstemmed Combining High-Resolution Imaging, Deep Learning, and Dynamic Modeling to Separate Disease and Senescence in Wheat Canopies
title_short Combining High-Resolution Imaging, Deep Learning, and Dynamic Modeling to Separate Disease and Senescence in Wheat Canopies
title_sort combining high resolution imaging deep learning and dynamic modeling to separate disease and senescence in wheat canopies
url https://spj.science.org/doi/10.34133/plantphenomics.0053
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