Variable rate treatments based on crop canopy characteristics

A farming machine comprising:

• an image acquisition system configured for capturing images of plants in a field comprising a plurality of regions;
• a plurality of treatment mechanisms configured to apply variable treatments to plants in the field;
• one or more processors;
• and
• a non-transitory computer readable storage medium comprising computer program instructions for determining a variable rate treatment for a farming machine to apply to identified plants, the computer program instructions, when executed by the one or more processors, causing the one or more processors to:
• capture a plurality of images for each region of a plurality of regions in the field;
• apply a canopy recognition model to the plurality of images for each region of the plurality of regions, the canopy recognition model configured to, for each region:
• identify each plant in the region using the plurality of images for the region,
• identify, for each identified plant, pixels of the plurality of images representing a plant canopy for the plant, and
• determine, for each identified plant, canopy characteristics of the plant canopy based on the pixels;
• determine, for each pant, control signals for a variable rate treatment based on determined canopy characteristics of the plant canopy for the plant;
• and
• actuating, for each identified plant using the determined control signals for that plant, a treatment mechanism of the farming machine to apply the determined variable rate treatment to the plant.