The Importance of Using Realistic 3D Canopy Models to Calculate Light Interception in the Field

Shunfu Xiao; Shuaipeng Fei; Qing Li; Bingyu Zhang; Haochong Chen; Demin Xu; Zhibo Cai; Kaiyi Bi; Yan Guo; Baoguo Li; Zhen Chen; Yuntao Ma

doi:10.34133/plantphenomics.0082

The Importance of Using Realistic 3D Canopy Models to Calculate Light Interception in the Field

Plant Phenomics. 2023 Aug 18:5:0082. doi: 10.34133/plantphenomics.0082. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Shunfu Xiao¹, Shuaipeng Fei¹, Qing Li¹, Bingyu Zhang¹, Haochong Chen¹, Demin Xu¹, Zhibo Cai¹, Kaiyi Bi², Yan Guo¹, Baoguo Li¹, Zhen Chen³, Yuntao Ma¹

Affiliations

¹ College of Land Science and Technology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China.
² The State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
³ Farmland Irrigation Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences/Key Laboratory of Water-Saving Agriculture of Henan Province, Xinxiang, China.

Abstract

Quantifying canopy light interception provides insight into the effects of plant spacing, canopy structure, and leaf orientation on radiation distribution. This is essential for increasing crop yield and improving product quality. Canopy light interception can be quantified using 3-dimensional (3D) plant models and optical simulations. However, virtual 3D canopy models (VCMs) have often been used to quantify canopy light interception because realistic 3D canopy models (RCMs) are difficult to obtain in the field. This study aims to compare the differences in light interception between VCMs and RCM. A realistic 3D maize canopy model (RCM) was reconstructed over a large area of the field using an advanced unmanned aerial vehicle cross-circling oblique (CCO) route and the structure from motion-multi-view stereo method. Three types of VCMs (VCM-1, VCM-4, and VCM-8) were then created by replicating 1, 4, and 8 individual realistic plants constructed by CCO in the center of the corresponding RCM. The daily light interception per unit area (DLI), as computed for the 3 VCMs, exhibited marked deviation from the RCM, as evinced by the relative root mean square error (rRMSE) values of 20.22%, 17.38%, and 15.48%, respectively. Although this difference decreased as the number of plants used to replicate the virtual canopy increased, rRMSE of DLI for VCM-8 and RCM still reached 15.48%. It was also found that the difference in light interception between RCMs and VCMs was substantially smaller in the early stage (48 days after sowing [DAS]) than in the late stage (70 DAS). This study highlights the importance of using RCM when calculating light interception in the field, especially in the later growth stages of plants.