BBR: An open-source standard workflow based on biophysical crop parameters for automatic Botrytis cinerea assessment in vineyards

Abstract

Assessing crop diseases at an early stage allows farmers to apply chemicals at the most efficient moment to control the pest and focus on the plants with the highest risk of developing the disease. Moreover, the earlier the assessment the lower the consequences, such as yield reduction, which is crucial to feed the increasing world population. BBR is the first open-source software based on physical and phenological crop parameters that grant the early assessment of botrytis bunch rot disease, caused by Botrytis cinerea, in vineyards using UAV images. This software has been released to improve the current procedure for early botrytis bunch rot assessment, which consists of laborious and time-consuming field inspections. In addition, BBR is easily modifiable by users to implement the workflow in their fields. For future work, the software can be extended to other crops and/or other fungal diseases.

Keywords

• Precision Agriculture
• Disease assessment
• Heatmap
• UAV
• Botrytis bunch rot