Automated early yield prediction in vineyards from on-the-go image acquisition

  1. Aquino, A. 1
  2. Millan, B. 1
  3. Diago, M.-P. 1
  4. Tardaguila, J. 1
  1. 1 Instituto de Ciencias de la Vid y del Vino
    info

    Instituto de Ciencias de la Vid y del Vino

    Logroño, España

    ROR https://ror.org/01rm2sw78

Journal:
Computers and Electronics in Agriculture

ISSN: 0168-1699

Year of publication: 2018

Volume: 144

Pages: 26-36

Type: Article

DOI: 10.1016/J.COMPAG.2017.11.026 SCOPUS: 2-s2.0-85035801258 WoS: WOS:000425072400004 GOOGLE SCHOLAR

More publications in: Computers and Electronics in Agriculture

Sustainable development goals

Abstract

Early grapevine yield assessment provides information to viticulturists to help taking management decisions to achieve the desired grape quality and yield amount. In previous works, image analysis has been explored to this effect, but with systems performing either manually, on a single variety or close to harvest-time, when there are few rectifiable agronomic aspects. This study presents a solution based on image analysis for the non-invasive and in-field yield prediction in vines of several varieties, at phenological stages previous to veraison, around 100 days from harvest. To this end, an all-terrain vehicle (ATV) was modified with equipment to autonomously capture images of 30 vine segments of five different varieties at night-time. The images were analysed with a new image analysis algorithm based on mathematical morphology and pixel classification, which yielded overall average Recall and Precision values of 0.8764 and 0.9582, respectively. Finally, a model was calibrated to produce yield predictions from the number of detected berries in images with a Root-Mean-Square-Error per vine of 0.16 kg. This accuracy makes the proposed methodology ideal for early yield prediction as a very helpful tool for the grape and wine industry. © 2017 Elsevier B.V.