US 2026/0298901 A1 · SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR DETECTION AND QUANTIFICATION OF POLLEN ON PLANT SURFACES

Abstract

Presented herein are systems and methods for automatically detecting and/or quantifying the amount of pollen on plant surfaces (e.g., determining how much pollen has been deposited onto plants, e.g., a region of plants). In certain embodiments, the plants are seed corn plants, where pollen grains are each from about 80 micrometers to about 125 micrometers in diameter, e.g., from about 90 micrometers to about 100 micrometers in diameter. It has been found that the methods described herein are able to accurately determine the amount of such plant surface that is covered by seed corn pollen. For example, in certain embodiments, it can be determined whether a density of coverage has been achieved to facilitate successful pollination. This information may be used, for example, to predict yields, determine which varieties in the crop were (or were likely) successfully pollinated, where and/or when artificial pollination methods are recommended, and the like.

Claims27

Dependent claims

A system for automatically detecting and/or quantifying pollen coverage on target plant surfaces in a given region of interest, the system comprising:

one or more sensors, wherein the one or more sensors captures data reflecting a state of the plant surfaces in the given region of interest;
a processor of a computing device;
and
a memory having instructions stored thereon, wherein the instructions, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to:
receive the data captured by the one or more sensors reflecting the state of the plant surfaces;
and
compute a value of pollen coverage in terms of any one or more of (a)-(c) as follows:
(a) an absolute or relative covered surface area over the given region of interest, (b) an average number of pollen grains or total pollen volume for the given region of interest, and/or (c) a measure of the uniformity of pollen distribution for the given region of interest.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Systems and methods for detection and quantification of pollen on plant surfaces

Life of this patent

Systems and methods for detection and quantification of pollen on plant surfaces

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims27