• KOREAN JOURNAL OF CROP SCIENCE
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• v.67 no.4
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• pp.274-284
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• 2022

To use kenaf (Hibiscus cannabinus L.) as a fiber and livestock feed, a high-yielding variety needs to be identified. For this, accurate phenotyping of plant height is required for this breeding purpose due to the strong relationship between plant height and yield. Plant height can be estimated using RGB images from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV-RGB) and photogrammetry based on Structure from Motion (SfM) algorithms. In kenaf, accurate measurement of height is limited because kenaf stems have high flexibility and its height is easily affected by wind, growing up to 3 ~ 4 m. Therefore, we aimed to identify a method suitable for the accurate estimation of plant height of kenaf and investigate the feasibility of using the UAV-RGB-derived plant height map. Height estimation derived from UAV-RGB was improved using multi-point calibration against the five different wooden structures with known heights (30, 60, 90, 120, and 150 cm). Using the proposed method, we analyzed the variation in temporal height of 23 kenaf cultivars. Our results demontrated that the actual and estimated heights were reliably comparable with the coefficient of determination (R²) of 0.80 and a slope of 0.94. This method enabled the effective identification of cultivars with significantly different heights at each growth stages.