Tall plant health management system

A vehicle-mountable system for health management of tall plant crop grown using a training system, said system comprising:

• an active illumination source configured to produce illuminating light to illuminate a tall plant crop;
• a first polariser arranged to polarise the illuminating light from the active illumination source;
• a second polariser arranged to cross-polarise light reflected from the tall plant crop, the second polariser having a polarisation axis transverse to the polarisation axis of the first polariser;
• and
• an image capture device configured to capture light cross-polarised by the second polariser;
• an on-board computation unit configured to process images of the light cross-polarised by the second polariser captured by the image capture device in real-time;
• wherein the active illumination source is configured to produce illuminating light of sufficient intensity such that the cross-polarised reflected illuminating light is of greater intensity than ambient light reflected from the tall plant crop and polarised by the second polariser.

A system for health management of tall plant crop grown using a training system, said system comprising:

• a vehicle-mountable arrangement comprising:
• a polarised high intensity illumination source configured to illuminate foliage or fruit of a target tall plant crop at a plurality of locations along or of said tall plant crop, and a polarised image capture device configured to capture images of the foliage and/or fruit illuminated at said plurality of locations, said high intensity illumination source and image capture device polarised with polarisers oriented transverse to one another;
• and
• an on-board computation unit configured to:
• (i) process images of the illuminated foliage and/or fruit in real-time together with high accuracy location data to form tall plant image data, and
• (ii) determine a feature of at least part of the tall plant crop at at least one location of the plurality of locations along or of said tall plant crop based on analysis of said tall plant image data;
• the system being configured to determine and recommend plant health management actions for the tall plant crop based on said feature, wherein said feature comprises any one or more of:
• yield, pests or disease present on and/or effecting the tall plant crop, location and number of canes, spurs, and/or branches on the tall plant crop, growth stage or maturity of the foliage and/or fruit the tall plant crop, nutritional deficiencies, location and number of plant suckers, location and number of healthy, and limp and/or damaged shoots, canopy density and/or leaf-area index, location and number of untreated pruning cuts and/or moisture level.