UAV image acquisition and processing for high‐throughput phenotyping in agricultural research and breeding programs

We are in a race against time to combat climate change and increase food production by 70% to feed the ever‐growing world population, which is expected to double by 2050. Agricultural research plays a vital role in improving crops and livestock through breeding programs and good agricultural practices, enabling sustainable agriculture and food systems. While advanced molecular breeding technologies have been widely adopted, phenotyping as an essential aspect of agricultural research and breeding programs has seen little development in most African institutions and remains a traditional method. However, the concept of high‐throughput phenotyping (HTP) has been gaining momentum, particularly in the context of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)‐based phenotyping. Although research into UAV‐based phenotyping is still limited, this paper aimed to provide a comprehensive overview and understanding of the use of UAV platforms and image analytics for HTP in agricultural research and to identify the key challenges and opportunities in this area. The paper discusses field phenotyping concepts, UAV classification and specifications, use cases of UAV‐based phenotyping, UAV imaging systems for phenotyping, and image processing and analytics methods. However, more research is required to optimize UAVs’ performance for image data acquisition, as limited studies have focused on the effect of UAVs’ operational parameters on data acquisition.