Crop signal markers facilitate crop detection and weed removal from lettuce and tomato by an intelligent cultivator

Increasing weed control costs and limited herbicide options threaten vegetable crop profitability. Traditional interrow mechanical cultivation is very effective at removing weeds between crop rows. However, weed control within the crop rows is necessary to establish the crop and prevent yield loss....

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Bibliographic Details
Published inWeed technology Vol. 34; no. 3; pp. 342 - 350
Main Authors Kennedy, HannahJoy, Fennimore, Steven A, Slaughter, David C, Nguyen, Thuy T, Vuong, Vivian L, Raja, Rekha, Smith, Richard F
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.06.2020
Subjects
Agricultural production
Automation
crop marking
Crop yield
Crops
Cultivation
Differentiation
Digital cameras
Economics
Fruit cultivation
Gardening
Hand tools
Herbicides
intelligent cultivation
Labor shortages
Lettuce
Light emitting diodes
Markers
Methods
Pattern recognition
Profitability
robotic weeding
Tomatoes
vegetable crops
Vegetables
Vision systems
Weed control
weed-crop differentiation
Weeds
California
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Summary:Increasing weed control costs and limited herbicide options threaten vegetable crop profitability. Traditional interrow mechanical cultivation is very effective at removing weeds between crop rows. However, weed control within the crop rows is necessary to establish the crop and prevent yield loss. Currently, many vegetable crops require hand weeding to remove weeds within the row that remain after traditional cultivation and herbicide use. Intelligent cultivators have come into commercial use to remove intrarow weeds and reduce cost of hand weeding. Intelligent cultivators currently on the market such as the Robovator, use pattern recognition to detect the crop row. These cultivators do not differentiate crops and weeds and do not work well among high weed populations. One approach to differentiate weeds is to place a machine-detectable mark or signal on the crop (i.e., the crop has the mark and the weed does not), thereby facilitating weed/crop differentiation. Lettuce and tomato plants were marked with labels and topical markers, then cultivated with an intelligent cultivator programmed to identify the markers. Results from field trials in marked tomato and lettuce found that the intelligent cultivator removed 90% more weeds from tomato and 66% more weeds from lettuce than standard cultivators without reducing yields. Accurate crop and weed differentiation described here resulted in a 45% to 48% reduction in hand-weeding time per hectare. Nomenclature: lettuce, Lactuca sativa L.; tomato, Solanum lycopersicum L
ISSN:0890-037X
1550-2740
DOI:10.1017/wet.2019.120