Three-Dimensional Wheat Modelling Based on Leaf Morphological Features and Mesh Deformation

Abstract

The three-dimensional (3D) morphological structure of wheat directly reflects the inter-relationship among genetics, environments, and cropping systems. However, the morphological complexity of wheat limits its rapid and accurate 3D modelling. We have developed a 3D wheat modelling method that is based on the progression from skeletons to mesh models. Firstly, we identified five morphological parameters that describe the 3D leaf features of wheat from amounts of 3D leaf digitizing data at the grain filling stage. The template samples were selected based on the similarity between the input leaf skeleton and leaf templates in the constructed wheat leaf database. The leaf modelling was then performed using the as-rigid-as-possible (ARAP) mesh deformation method. We found that 3D wheat modelling at the individual leaf level, leaf group, and individual plant scales can be achieved. Compared with directly acquiring 3D digitizing data for 3D modelling, it saves 79.9% of the time. The minimum correlation R2 of the extracted morphological leaf parameters between using the measured data and 3D model by this method was 0.91 and the maximum RMSE was 0.03, implying that this method preserves the morphological leaf features. The proposed method provides a strong foundation for further morphological phenotype extraction, functional–structural analysis, and virtual reality applications in wheat plants. Overall, we provide a new 3D modelling method for complex plants.