A template-free machine vision-based crop row detection algorithm

Due to the increase in the use of precision agriculture, field trials have increased in size to allow for genomic selection tool development by linking quantitative phenotypic traits to sequence variations in the DNA of various crops. Crop row detection is an important step to enable the development of an efficient downstream analysis pipeline for genomic selection. In this paper, an efficient crop row detection algorithm was proposed that detected crop rows in colour images without the use of templates and most other pre-information such as number of rows and spacing between rows. The method only requires input on field weed intensity. The algorithm was robust in challenging field trial conditions such as variable light, sudden shadows, poor illumination, presence of weeds and noise and irregular crop shape. The algorithm can be applied to crop images taken from the top and side views. The algorithm was tested on a public dataset with side view images of crop rows and on Genomic Sub-Selection dataset in which images were taken from the top view. Different analyses were performed to check the robustness of the algorithm and to the best of authors’ knowledge, the Receiver Operating Characteristic graph has been applied for the first time in crop row detection algorithm testing. Lastly, comparing this algorithm with several state-of-the-art methods, it exhibited superior performance.