收藏切换
Point Cloud Data-driven Methods for Estimating Maize Leaf Biomass
收藏切换
Zhangbin WU1, 2, 3, Ning HE3, Yandong WU3, Xinyu GUO1, 3, Weiliang WEN1, 2, 3
Smart Agriculture | 2026, 8(1) : 156 - 166
Less
收藏切换
Smart Agriculture | 2026, 8(1): 156-166
• Information Processing and Decision Making •
Point Cloud Data-driven Methods for Estimating Maize Leaf Biomass
Full
Zhangbin WU1, 2, 3, Ning HE3, Yandong WU3, Xinyu GUO1, 3, Weiliang WEN1, 2, 3
Affiliations
  • 1.Information Technology Research Center, Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, Beijing 100097, China
  • 2.College of Information and Electrical Engineering, Shenyang Agricultural University, Shenyang 110161, China
  • 3.Beijing Key Lab of Digital Plant, National Engineering Research Center for Information Technology in Agriculture, Beijing 100097, China
  • WU Zhangbin, E-mail:

About Author:

WU Zhangbin, E-mail:

Published: 2026-01-30 doi: 10.12133/j.smartag.SA202509015
Outline
收藏切换

[Objective] Maize leaf dry biomass is a key trait that reflects plant morphology, growth vigor, and physiological processes including photosynthetic production. Its dynamic changes can effectively characterize the growth status of maize. Accurate estimation of maize leaf dry biomass is crucial for accurately predicting maize yield and informing production management decisions. Extensive research on crop dry biomass estimation indicates that 3D point cloud data characterizing crop morphological structure, along with features derived therefrom, exhibit an extremely high correlation with crop dry biomass. However, traditional dry biomass prediction studies focus primarily on the population canopy scale, and lack effective prediction methods for dry biomass at the plant and organ scales. Research on non-destructive measurement methods for maize leaf dry biomass, based on 3D point clouds and machine learning, the demand is conducted to address for rapid acquisition of organ-level dry biomass information in maize cultivation and management research. [Methods] Maize leaf point cloud data were acquired using three techniques: Multi-view stereo (MVS), LiDAR scanning, and 3D digitalization (DT). The leaf point clouds underwent preprocessing steps that included plant segmentation, denoising, mesh refinement, and uniform subsampling. Subsequently, morphological traits were extracted from the processed data, including leaf length, leaf area, bounding box dimensions, and the number of points contained within the leaf point clouds. Three machine learning methods: random forest (RF), gradient boosting regression tree (GBRT), and support vector regression (SVR), as well as two deep learning methods: convolutional neural network (CNN) and fully connected neural network (FCNN), were employed for predicting maize leaf dry weight. A point cloud-based maize leaf dry biomass prediction model was subsequently developed. This study utilized the mean squared error reduction method inherent to RF and the cumulative improvement method based on decision tree splits in GBRT to rank and visualize feature importance for optimal models. The resulting rankings were then visualized. Simultaneously, Pearson correlation analysis was used to analyze the correlations of the features from the fused dataset (integrating data from the three devices) as well as those from the DT data with maize leaf dry biomass. [Results and Discussions] The results demonstrated that, among the dry biomass prediction models developed in this study, the model based on Laser point cloud data and the FCNN method achieved the highest accuracy, with a mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.08 g, a mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of 4.60%, a root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.10 g, and a coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.98. In the correlation analysis, the leaf area exhibited the strongest correlation with dry biomass (r = 0.92), followed by the number of points (r = 0.88), leaf width (r = 0.86), and leaf length (r = 0.77). In the feature importance ranking, the leaf area trait consistently ranked within the top two positions, whereas the number of points ranked among the top three in most cases. However, features such as the height of the leaf base above the ground, the horizontal distances from the leaf tip and apex to the stem, and the azimuth angle demonstrated low correlations with dry biomass and low feature importance. [Conclusions] Among all the maize leaf features investigated in this study, size-related traits (such as leaf area, point count, leaf length, and leaf width) had the greatest impact on the accuracy of dry biomass estimation. The utilization of high-resolution 3D point clouds of maize leaves, combined with machine learning methods, enabled a high-accuracy estimation of leaf dry weight and provided a novel approach for the non-destructive measurement of dry biomass in crop organs.

maize leaves  /  3D point cloud  /  machine learning  /  biomass prediction  /  deep learning
武张斌, 何宁, 吴延东, 郭新宇, 温维亮. 点云数据驱动的玉米叶片生物量估算方法. 智慧农业(中英文), 2026 , 8 (1) : 156 -166 . DOI: 10.12133/j.smartag.SA202509015
Zhangbin WU, Ning HE, Yandong WU, Xinyu GUO, Weiliang WEN. Point Cloud Data-driven Methods for Estimating Maize Leaf Biomass[J]. Smart Agriculture, 2026 , 8 (1) : 156 -166 . DOI: 10.12133/j.smartag.SA202509015
  • The Science and Technology Project of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs
Year 2026 volume 8 Issue 1
166
76
Cite this Article
BibTeX
Article Info
doi: 10.12133/j.smartag.SA202509015
  • Receive Date:2025-09-05
  • Online Date:2026-10-16
  • Published:2026-01-30
Article Data
Affiliations
History
  • Received:2025-09-05
Funding
The Science and Technology Project of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs
Affiliations
    1.Information Technology Research Center, Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, Beijing 100097, China
    2.College of Information and Electrical Engineering, Shenyang Agricultural University, Shenyang 110161, China
    3.Beijing Key Lab of Digital Plant, National Engineering Research Center for Information Technology in Agriculture, Beijing 100097, China

Corresponding:

WEN Weiliang, E-mail:
References
Share
https://castjournals.cast.org.cn/joweb/zhny/EN/10.12133/j.smartag.SA202509015
Share to
QR

Scan QR to access full text

Cite this article
BibTeX
Citations
表12种不同金属材料的力学参数
科
Family
属数
Number of
genus
种数
Number of
species
占总种数比例
Percentage of
total species (%)
属
Genus
种数
Number of
species
占总种数比例
Percentage of total
species (%)
鹅膏菌科Amanitaceae 2 11 5.26 鹅膏菌属 Amanita 10 4.78
小菇科 Mycenaceae 2 12 5.74 丝盖伞属 Inocybe 5 2.39
多孔菌科 Polyporaceae 8 14 6.70 蜡蘑属 Laccaria 5 2.39
红菇科 Russulaceae 3 23 11.00 小皮伞属 Marasmius 6 2.87
小菇属 Mycena 11 5.26
光柄菇属 Pluteus 5 2.39
红菇属 Russula 17 8.13
栓菌属 Trametes 5 2.39
关闭全屏
  • BibTeX
  • EndNote
  • RefWorks
  • TxT