Gerie van der Heijden

Corteva Agriscience · Predictive Agriculture

Housing systems for laying hens have changed over the years due to increased public concern regarding animal welfare. In terms of sustainability, animal welfare is just one aspect that needs to be considered. Social aspects as well as environmental and economic factors need to be included as well. In this study, we assessed the sustainability of en...

Pesticide risk assessment is hampered by worst-case assumptions leading to overly pessimistic assessments. On the other hand, cumulative health effects of similar pesticides are often not taken into account. This paper describes models and a web-based software system developed in the European research project ACROPOLIS. The models are appropriate f...

High-throughput automated plant phenotyping has recently received a lot of attention. Leaf area is an important characteristic in understanding plant performance, but time-consuming and destructive to measure accurately. In this research, we describe a method to use a histogram of image intensities to automatically measure plant leaf area of tall p...

In this chapter, an overview of different plant features is given, from (sub) cellular to canopy level. A myriad of methods is available to measure these features using image analysis, and often, multiple methods can be used to measure the same feature. Several criteria are listed for choosing a certain (set of) image descriptor(s) to measure a pla...

Leaf area measurements are commonly obtained by destructive and laborious practice. This study shows how stereo and time-of-flight (ToF) images can be combined for non-destructive automatic leaf area measurements. The authors focus on some challenging plant images captured in a greenhouse environment, and show that even the state-of-the-art stereo...

Autonomous navigation of field robots in an agricultural environment is a difficult task due to the inherent uncertainty in the environment. The drawback of existing systems is the lack of robustness to these uncertainties. In this study we propose a vision-based navigation method to address these problems. The focus is on navigation through a maiz...

Reduction of energy use for assimilation lighting is one of the most urgent goals of current greenhouse horticulture in the Netherlands. In recent years numerous lighting systems have been tested in greenhouses, yet their efficiency has been very difficult to measure in practice. This simulation study evaluated a number of lighting strategies using...

In our post-genomic world, where we are deluged with genetic information, the bottleneck to scientific progress is often phenotyping, i.e. measuring the observable characteristics of living organisms, such as counting the number of fruits on a plant. Image analysis is one route to automation. In this paper we present a method for recognising and co...

Tulip breaking virus (TBV) causes severe economic losses in flower bulbs in the Netherlands. To prevent further spread by aphids, the vector of the disease, infected plants must be removed from the field as soon as possible. Until now screening has been carried out by visual inspection in the field. As the availability of human experts is limited t...

Autonomous navigation of robots in an agricultural environment is a difficult task due to the inherent uncertainty in the environment. Many existing agricultural robots use computer vision and other sensors to supplement Global Positioning System (GPS) data when navigating. Vision based methods are sensitive to ambient lighting conditions. This is...

Will a top rose variety perform just as well in Kenya as in the Netherlands? Can you predict how it will perform based on its genetic characteristics? A large trial which tested 20 varieties from five plant breeders at ten locations in the Netherlands and abroad gives many new insights, but still no definitive answers.

De gewasopbouw of gewasstructuur is een belangrijke bepalende factor voor productie en kwaliteit bij roos. Met name het uitlopen van een okselknop en en de daarop volgende uitgroei tot bloemscheut hangen nauw samen met de gewasstructuur. De ideale gewasopbouw is niet gelijk voor alle rassen, terwijl nieuwe rassen elkaar in snel tempo opvolgen. Ook...

Most high-throughput systems for automated plant phenotyping involve a fixed recording cabinet to which plants are transported. However, important greenhouse plants like pepper are too tall to be transported. In this research we developed a system to automatically measure plant characteristics of tall pepper plants in the greenhouse. With a device...

A functional-structural model for a tomato crop, situated in a greenhouse, was developed to calculate the most efficient lamp (HPS, LED) positions and crop structure, with the objective to reduce energy consumption and improve light use efficiency. The model was built within the GroIMP platform and written using the dedicated modelling language XL....

Hiremath S, Van Der Heijden G, Van Evert FK & Stein A (2012) The role of textures to improve the detection accuracy of Rumex obtusifolius in robotic systems. Weed Research.52, 430–440. Rumex obtusifolius is a common weed that is difficult to control in organic farming systems. Among the proposed non-chemical treatment methods, robotic systems to me...

Tulip breaking virus (TBV) causes severe economic losses for the Netherlands. Infected plants must be removed from the field as soon as possible to prevent further spread by aphids. Until now screening is done by visual inspection in the field. As the availability of human experts is limited there is an urgent need for a rapid, automated and object...

Leaf area is a major parameter in many physiological and plant modeling studies. When we want to use physiological models in plant breeding, we need to measure the leaf area for a large number of genotypes. This requires a fast and non-destructive method. In this study, we investigated whether for cut roses a statistical model of simple measurement...

Rumex obtusifolius is a common weed that is difficult to control. The most common way to control weeds—using herbicides—is being reconsidered because of its adverse environmental impact. Robotic systems are regarded as a viable non-chemical alternative for treating R. obtusifolius and also other weeds. Among the existing systems for weed control, o...

An interesting strategy for improvement of a complex trait dissects the complex trait in a number of physiological component traits, with the latter having hopefully a simple genetic basis. The complex trait is then improved via improvement of its component traits. As first part of such a strategy to improve yield in pepper, we present genetic and...

For plant variety testing many plant characteristics need to be measured to assess distinctness between varieties and uniformity and stability of a variety. The characteristics are described in guidelines and protocols for each crop. These guidelines are established by international organizations. Several characteristics, related to shape and form...

De potentie van suikerbietenteelt in een kas voor de productie van bouwstenen voor de biorenewables industrie is onderzocht in opdracht van Biorenewables Business Platform van AgentschapNL en de Rabobank. Een kasteelt biedt in vergelijking met de buitenteelt meer mogelijkheden voor klimaatoptimalisatie en productiespreiding. Met behulp van rekenmod...

Publication Inra prise en compte dans l'analyse bibliométrique des publications scientifiques mondiales sur les Fruits, les Légumes et la Pomme de terre. Période 2000-2012. http://prodinra.inra.fr/record/256699

This paper shows how stereo and Time-of-Flight (ToF) images can be combined to estimate dense depth maps in order to automate plant phenotyping. We focus on some challenging plant images captured in a glasshouse environment, and show that even the state-of-the-art stereo methods produce unsatisfactory results. By developing a geometric approach whi...

The production system of cut-rose (Rosa × hybrida) involves a complex combination of plant material, management practice and environment. Plant structure is determined by bud break and shoot development while having an effect on local light climate. The aim of the present study is to cover selected aspects of the cut-rose system using functional-st...

Broad-leaved dock is a common and troublesome grassland weed with a wide geographic distribution. In conventional farming the weed is normally controlled by using a selective herbicide, but in organic farming manual removal is the best option to control this weed. The objective of our work was to develop a robot that can navigate a pasture, detect...

Tulpenmozaïekvirus (TBV) veroorzaakt jaarlijks veel schade in tulpen. Vooral in de witte en gele cultivars is de afkeur groot. Om de virusdruk te verminderen worden in de praktijk door ziekzoekers viruszieke tulpen uit het veld verwijderd. Het is moeilijk ervaren ziekzoekers te vinden. Daarom is onderzoek gedaan naar een oplossing waarbij virusziek...

Het RIVM en de Wageningen Universiteit hebben in 2007 de IPRA-methode (Integrated Probabilistic Risk Assessment) ontwikkeld om te kunnen inschatten welk deel van de bevolking effect ondervindt van niet-kankerverwekkende stoffen in voeding. Uit onderzoek van het RIVM, in opdracht van de nieuwe Voedsel en Waren Autoriteit (nVWA) blijkt dat de IPRA-me...

In 2008 is het project Ziekzoeken in tulp gestart na een succesvol laboratoriumexperiment. In 2009 bleek de overgang van laboratorium naar een handmatig bediend prototype in het veld een te grote stap. In 2010 zijn de camera's, belichting en uitvoering van de ziekzoekrobot aangepast. Uit de resultaten in 2010 bleek dat een verdere verbetering van d...

Ripening of tomatoes is a combination of processes including the breakdown of chlorophyll and build-up of carotenes. Chlorophyll and carotenes have specific, well-known reflection spectra. Using knowledge of the known spectral properties of the main constituent compounds, it may be possible to calculate their concentrations using spectral measureme...

Within the EFSA Article 36 project “European Tool Usual Intake” (ETUI) a workshop was organised in May 2010 where the different available models to calculate usual intake were presented and discussed. This report integrates the workshop background document, the presentations given by experts, and the discussions during the workshop. The purpose of...

Experiments are described for detection of Tulip Breaking Virus in tulip plants. Four optical techniques were investigated and compared with visual assessment by crop experts as well as with Elisa (Enzyme ImmunoAssay) analysis of the same plants. The optical sensor techniques used were: an RGB Color camera, a spectrophotometer ranging from 400-2400...

The prediction of phenotypic responses from genetic and environmental information is an area of active research in genetics, physiology and statistics. Rapidly increasing amounts of phenotypic information become available as a consequence of high throughput phenotyping techniques, while more and cheaper genotypic data follow from the development of...

Ridderzuring (Rumex obtusifolius L.) is een veelvoorkomend en lastig te bestrijden onkruid dat vooral biologische melkveehouders grote problemen bezorgt. Op initiatief van de sector wordt daarom een robot ontwikkeld die geheel zelfstandig ridderzuring opspoort en vernietigt.

De teelt van tulpen kampt met aantasting door verschillende virussen, die de opbrengst en de kwaliteit verlagen en een belemmering zijn voor de export. Bij een hoge besmetting worden hele partijen afgekeurd. In 2009 is vervolgens een uitgebreid veldonderzoek uitgevoerd. Hierbij is met een eerste prototype ziekzoekrobot door een aantal proefveldplot...

In 2009 heeft de ziekzoekrobot voor het eerst op PPO onderzoek gedaan naar viruszieke tulpen. Ervaren ziekzoekers gingen eveneens aan de slag. De resultaten van de cultivar 'Barcelona' zijn geanalyseerd en hebben geleid tot enige aanpasssingen in het onderzoek dat in 2010 wordt voortgezet.

Tulpenmozaïekvirus (tulip breaking virus - TBV) veroorzaakt jaarlijks veel economische schade in tulpen. Vooral in witte en gele tulpencultivars is de afkeur groot, daar hier de symptomen moeilijk zichtbaar zijn en de benodigde visuele expertise om de subtiele virusbeelden te zien nog maar beperkt aanwezig is bij de tulpentelers. In een laboratoriu...

A statistical model is presented extending the integrated probabilistic risk assessment (IPRA) model of van der Voet and Slob [van der Voet, H., Slob, W., 2007. Integration of probabilistic exposure assessment and probabilistic hazard characterisation. Risk Analysis, 27, 351-371]. The aim is to characterise the health impact due to one or more chem...

Volunteer potato is a perennial weed that is difficult to control in crop rotations. It was our objective to build a small, low-cost robot capable of detecting volunteer potato plants in a cornfield and thus demonstrate the potential for automatic control of this weed. We used an electric toy truck as the basis for our robot. We developed a fast ro...

van E vert FK, P older G, van der H eijden GWAM, K empenaar C & L otz LAP (2009). Real‐time vision‐based detection of Rumex obtusifolius in grassland. Weed Research 49 , 164–174. Summary Rumex obtusifolius is a common grassland weed that is hard to control in a non‐chemical way. The objective of our research was to automate the detection of R. obt...

This paper presents the development of a mathematical model to predict the perception of naturalness for a range of materials, based on an understanding of the relationship between the physical attributes of the material and the human sensory inputs. The work is being carried out under an European Union project called 'Measurement of Naturalness' (...

Experiments are described for detection of Tulip Breaking Virus in tulip plants. Four optical techniques were investigated and compared with visual assessment by crop experts as well as with Elisa (Enzyme ImmunoAssay) analysis of the same plants. The optical sensor techniques used were: an RGB Color camera, a spectrophotometer ranging from 400-2400...

Het RIVM heeft de IPRA-methode succesvol toegepast om de gezondheidsrisico’s voor de mens van vijf stoffen in voeding te beschrijven. Deze methode is ontwikkeld om de risico’s gedetailleerd te kunnen beschrijven als uit klassieke risicobeoordelingen blijkt dat er risico’s zijn, of als risico’s voor de gezondheid niet uitgesloten kunnen worden. Voor...

Broad-leaved dock (Rumex obtusifolius L.) is a common and troublesome grassland weed with a wide geographic distribution. In organic farming, the best option to control the weed is manual removal of the plants. In this report we describe the development and first tests of a robot to detect and control broad-leaved dock. An analysis of requirements...

Introduction The EU project SPICY (Smart tools for Prediction and Improvement of Crop Yield) aims to develop a suite of tools for molecular breeding of crop plants for sustainable and competitive agriculture. The tools help the breeder in predicting phenotypic response of genotypes for complex traits under a range of environmental conditions. Peppe...

Er werden vier series fotografische opnamen gemaakt, twee eerste vluchten bij een snijbedrijf en twee eerste vluchten bij een handoogstbedrijf. De opnamen werden tot vier videoclips verwerkt, bekeken en beschreven. Van individuele champignons werd halfautomatisch de uitgroei gemeten. Opnamen met een frequentie van een per 4 uur brachten de dynamisc...

Het vinden van viruszieke tulpen in het veld is een moeilijke klus, zelfs geroutineerde ziekzoeker heeft moeite met vooral de gele en witte cultivars. Met gevoelige cameratechnieken lijkt het mogelijk te zijn om het ziekzoeken te automatiseren. Op initiatief van tulpenteler Piet Apeldoorn zijn PPO en PRI aan de slag gegaan

Driven by the success of the previous events in Wageningen in 2003, 2004 and 2005 and the Field Robot Event hosted by Hohenheim University in Stuttgart, Germany in 2006, Wageningen University organized the 5th Field Robot Event on June 14-16, 2007. This event was accompanied by a workshop and a fair where the teams were able to present their robots...

For crop management, information on the actual status of the crop is important for taking decisions on nitrogen supply, water supply or harvesting. One would also like to take into account the local spatial variation of the crop. Remote sensing has proved to be a useful technique for estimating and mapping the spatial variation of various biophysic...

In this paper, the potential of a band shaving algorithm based on support vector machines (SVM) applied to hyper-spectral data for estimating biomass within grasslands is studied. Field spectrometer data and biomass measurements were collected from a homogeneously managed grassland field. The SVM band shaving technique was compared with a partial l...

We propose a method for identifying a set of colours for displaying 2D and 3D categorical images when the categories are unordered labels. The principle is to find maximally distinct sets of colours. We either generate colours sequentially, to maximize the dissimilarity or distance between a new colour and the set of colours already chosen, or use...

A method is proposed for both estimating and correcting a translational mis-alignment between digital images, taking account of aliasing of high-frequency information. A parametric model is proposed for the power- and cross-spectra of the multivariate stochastic process that is assumed to have generated a continuous-space version of the images. Par...

Stress in plants can be measured using chlorophyll fluorescence imaging. The development of patterns in time can give an indication of the type of stress. Since leaves grow and show leaf movements, there is no pixel to pixel correspondence in time laps imaging data. In this article, Penalized Likelihood Warping and Robust Point Matching methods for...

The aim of this chapter is to give an overview of the measurements needed for development and parameterization of a functional-structural crop model. Special emphasis will be given to measurements for structural/architectural processes. Size (area, length, width, thickness, volume) of the various organs (e.g., leaves, internodes, flowers, fruits an...

The objective of the work described here was to detect broad-leaved weeds in grassland. We used textural image analysis to detect weeds in grass. In the textural analysis, images were divided in square tiles, which were subjected to a 2-D FFT. The power of the resulting spectrum was found to be a measure of the presence of coarse elements (weeds)....

Het doel van dit rapport is om een inventarisatie te presenteren van mogelijke methoden voor de kwantitatieve evaluatie van risico's in de diervoederketen. Hiervoor zijn zeven methoden nader uitgewerkt. Daarnaast is een specifieke casus uitgewerkt waarin deze methoden worden gebruikt om de toepasbaarheid te toetsen. Er is gekozen om de casus te ric...

The recently developed virtual plant modelling approach has strongly increased the potential of model applications in crop sciences. Virtual plants are based on a new modelling concept and are generated in a 3-dimensional (3D) virtual space. In this paper, a coupling of a structural and a physiological module is applied to incorporate 3D environmen...

Dit rapport onderzoekt ondernemerschap en ketensamenwerking in de transitie naar een duurzame Nederlandse vissector. Het laat succes en faalfactoren zien bij de ontwikkeling van duurzame visketeninitiatieven. Deze inzichten leveren de bouwstoffen voor oplossingsrichtingen en innovatie- en stimuleringsbeleid. This report reviews entrepreneurship and...

An integration of structural and physiological models is used to simulate 3D plant growth and visual appearance of cut chrysanthemum, reacting on environmental factors. Measurements to calibrate the model include 3D data of digitised plants as well as a number of measurements and observations on harvested plants, including biomass per organ. The st...

Grassland management has a large influence on the operating cost and environmental impact of dairy farms and requires accurate, detailed, and timely information about the yield and quality of grass. Our objective was to evaluate imaging spectroscopy as a means to obtain accurate, detailed, and rapid measurements of grass yield and quality. The work...

Veehouderij ketens vormen een belangrijke economische activiteit in Gelderland en Overijssel. In Oost Nederland zijn een aantal concentraties van economische activiteiten rond dierlijke eiwitproductie gevestigd: Gelderse Vallei (pluimvee), Veluwe (kalveren), Achterhoek en Twente (varkens). Deze ketens worden gekenmerkt door een aantal, veelal verge...

Fusarium head blight (FHB) is a harmful fungal disease that occurs in small grains. Non-destructive detection of this disease is traditionally done using spectroscopy or image processing. In this paper the combination of these two in the form of spectral imaging is evaluated. Transmission spectral images are recorded, both in the visible and near-i...