Sindhuja Sankaran

• Ph.D.
• Professor (Assistant) at Washington State University

Climate-driven water challenges in the Pacific Northwest necessitate precise irrigation for sustainable vineyard management. In such scenarios, conservation of water using different approaches, including subsurface irrigation, becomes critical. Detecting crop water status becomes key to evaluating and managing such approaches. This study examines h...

Salmonella and Campylobacter are major foodborne pathogens that cause outbreaks associated with contaminated chicken liver. Proper cooking is necessary to avoid the risk of illness to consumers. This study tested the thermal inactivation of a 4-strain Salmonella cocktail and a 3-strain Campylobacter cocktail in chicken livers separately at temperat...

In the potato processing industry, the length-to-width (L/W) ratio of potato tubers is a critical quality indicator, especially for products like French fries and chips. Traditional measurement methods such as manual scales or calipers are labor-intensive and subject to variability. Addressing this challenge, we introduce a mobile application (Tube...

Water scarcity profoundly affects crop growth in rain-fed regions, including the Pacific Northwest (PNW) of the USA. While unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are integral for crop monitoring in breeding programs, their use is resource-intensive and necessitates pilot presence in the field. Alternatively, Internet of Things (IoT)-based sensor systems o...

Crop yield potential in breeding trials can be captured using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) based multispectral imagery. Several digital traits or phenotypes such as vegetation indices can represent canopy crop vigor and overall plant health, which can be used to evaluate differences in performance across varieties in crop breeding programs. This d...

Water scarcity profoundly affects crop growth in rain-fed regions, including the Pacific Northwest (PNW) of the USA. While unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are integral for crop monitoring in breeding programs, their use is resource-intensive and necessitates pilot presence in the field. Alternatively, Internet of Things (IoT)-based sensor systems o...

Over the decades in the US, the introduction of rootstocks with precocity, stress tolerance, and dwarfing has increased significantly to improve the advancement in modern orchard systems for high production of tree fruits. In pear, it is difficult to establish modern high-density orchard systems due to the lack of appropriate vigor-controlling root...

Introduction Remote sensing using unmanned aerial systems (UAS) are prevalent for phenomics and precision agricultural applications. The high-resolution data for these applications can provide useful spectral characteristics of crops associated with performance traits such as seed yield. With the recent availability of high-resolution satellite ima...

Defects can increase oxygen and water vapor transmission rates (OTRs, WVTRs) of metal-oxide (MO)-coated films, reducing their effectiveness as packaging for shelf-stable foods. These defects are microscopic, can occur at random places in the coating and are highly challenging to locate. This study focused on formulating methylene blue (MB)-containi...

Evaluation of disease severity of breeding materials to a disease is a key step to develop disease-resistant cultivars in plant breeding. Visual evaluation that requires intensive training and experience can be subjective, though it is used as a common practice in plant breeding. Optical sensing techniques have been evaluated for disease monitoring...

Aphanomyces root rot (ARR) is a devastating disease that affects the production of pea. The plants are prone to infection at any growth stage, and there are no chemical or cultural controls. Thus, the development of resistant pea cultivars is important. Phenomics technologies to support the selection of resistant cultivars through phenotyping can b...

Pasture management approaches can determine the productivity, sustainability, and ecological balance of livestock production. Sensing techniques potentially provide methods to assess the performance of different grazing practices that are more labor and time efficient than traditional methods (e.g., soil and crop sampling). This study utilized high...

In recent years, applications of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) sensing technologies such as field asymmetric-waveform ion-mobility spectrometry (FAIMS) system in agriculture have accelerated. FAIMS system for VOCs sensing is attractive as it offers high sensitivity, selectivity, real-time monitoring, and portability. However, the development of...

Seed traits can easily be assessed using image processing tools to evaluate differences in crop variety performances in response to environment and stress. In this chapter, we describe a protocol to measure seed traits that can be applied to crops with small grains, including legume grains with little modification. The imaging processing tool can b...

The conventional plant breeding evaluation of large sets of plant phenotypes with precision and speed is very challenging. Thus, consistent, automated, multifaceted, and high-throughput phenotyping (HTP) technologies are becoming increasingly significant as tools to aid conventional breeding programs to develop genetically improved crops. With rapi...

Forage and field peas provide essential nutrients for livestock diets, and high-quality field peas can influence livestock health and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Above-ground biomass (AGBM) is one of the vital traits and the primary component of yield in forage pea breeding programs. However, a standard method of AGBM measurement is a destruct...

The last decade witnessed an unprecedented increase in the adoption of genomic selection (GS) and phenomics tools in plant breeding programs, especially in major cereal crops. GS has demonstrated the potential for selecting superior genotypes with high precision and accelerating the breeding cycle. Phenomics is a rapidly advancing domain to allevia...

This study was aimed at early detection and rot progression monitoring in stored potatoes using a portable field asymmetric ion mobility spectrometry (FAIMS) system. Tuber samples of Ranger Russet (RR) and Russet Burbank (RB) cultivars were inoculated with Pectobacterium carotovorumsubsp.carotovorum (causes soft rot) and sterile water (control). Th...

Soft rot and Pythium leak are postharvest storage diseases of potato tubers that can cause substantial crop losses in the US. This study focused on detecting volatile organic compounds (VOCs) associated with rot inoculated tubers during storage (up to 21 days) using headspace solid-phase microextraction (SPME) coupled to gas chromatography (GC) wit...

Normalization of anisotropic solar reflectance is an essential factor that needs to be considered for field-based phenotyping applications to ensure reliability, consistency, and interpretability of time-series multispectral data acquired using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Different models have been developed to characterize the bidirectional...

Plant breeders are interested in plant height data, which is an important agronomic data associated with lodging and mechanical harvest. Manual measurement of plant height with limited samples per plot and data acquisition frequency remains the standard method in breeding programs. To overcome such limitations, this study focuses on plant height es...

Sensor applications for plant phenotyping can advance and strengthen crop breeding programs. One of the powerful sensing options is the automated sensor system, which can be customized and applied for plant science research. The system can provide high spatial and temporal resolution data to delineate crop interaction with weather changes in a dive...

Raw chicken livers are often contaminated with Campylobacter and Salmonella. Cooking is considered the last defense in pathogen control in meals containing chicken livers. However, consumers’ preference for pink color and a creamy texture as desired attributes in preparing liver pâté may lead to inadequate cooking, thereby increasing the risk of fo...

Plateauing yield and stressful environmental conditions necessitate selecting crops for superior physiological traits with untapped potential to enhance crop performance. Plant productivity is often limited by carbon fixation rates that could be improved by increasing maximum photosynthetic carboxylation capacity (Vcmax). However, Vcmax measurement...

Tree fruit architecture results from combination of the training system and pruning and thinning processes across multiple growth and development years. Further, the tree fruit architecture contributes to the light interception and improves tree growth, fruit quality, and fruit yield, in addition to easing the process of orchard management and harv...

The Pacific Northwest is an important pulse production region in the United States. Currently, pulse crop (chickpea, lentil, and dry pea) breeders rely on traditional phenotyping approaches to collect performance and agronomic data to support decision making. Traditional phenotyping poses constraints on data availability (e.g., number of locations...

Biogenic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted by plants can reveal information about plant adaptation, defense processes, and biological pathways. Thus, such VOC data may be utilized to capture phenotypic plant responses to the environment. In this study, the main objective was to evaluate the potential of biogenic compounds, including VOCs, t...

This research investigated the influence of 915 MHz microwave-assisted thermal pasteurization and conventional hot water pasteurization (F9010=10 min) on chlorophylls, greenness (a*), ascorbic acid, and the growth of spoilage microorganisms in green beans in storage at 10, 7, and 2 °C for up to 100 days. Frozen cut green beans were processed in vac...

Highlights Vegetation indices (NDVI, GNDVI, and SAVI) extracted from high-resolution satellite imagery were significantly associated with vegetation indices extracted from UAV imagery. High-resolution satellite data can be used to predict maize yield at breeding plot scale. Breeding plot sizes and the variability between maize genotypes may be asso...

Highlights Tree canopy architecture traits are associated with its productivity and management. Understanding these traits is important for both precision agriculture and phenomics applications. Remote sensing platforms (satellite, UAV, etc.) and multiple approaches (SfM, LiDAR) have been used to assess these traits. 3D reconstruction of tree canop...

Phenomics technologies allow quantitative assessment of phenotypes across a larger number of plant genotypes compared to traditional phenotyping approaches. The utilization of such technologies has enabled the generation of multidimensional plant traits creating big datasets. However, to harness the power of phenomics technologies, more sophisticat...

Over the past ten years, plant phenotyping technologies that utilize sensing and data mining approaches to estimate crop traits in a high-throughput and objective manner, have been evaluated and applied in different crop improvement and breeding programs. Multiple platforms, from proximal to unmanned aerial systems based remote sensing, have been d...

Pinholes and cracks in metal-oxide-coated multilayer PET food packaging films decrease their barrier performance, reducing the shelf life of the products packaged. These defects tend to have dimensions in nanometer to micrometer range and are present at random locations in the films, making it challenging to analyze them. In this study, we used an...

Pinholes and cracks in metal-oxide-coated multilayer PET food packaging films decrease their barrier performance, reducing the shelf life of the products packaged. These defects tend to have dimensions in nanometer to micrometer range and are present at random locations in the films, making it challenging to analyze them. In this study, we used an...

Lentil (Lens culinaris Medikus) is an important source of protein for people in developing countries. Aphanomyces root rot (ARR) has emerged as one of the most devastating diseases affecting lentil production. In this study, we applied two complementary quantitative trait loci (QTL) analysis approaches to unravel the genetic architecture underlying...

The timing and duration of flowering are key agronomic traits that are often associated with the ability of a variety to escape abiotic stress such as heat and drought. Flowering information is valuable in both plant breeding and agricultural production management. Visual assessment, the standard protocol used for phenotyping flowering, is a low-th...

Dry bean breeding programs are crucial to improve the productivity and resistance to biotic and abiotic stress. Phenotyping is a key process in breeding that refers to crop trait evaluation. In recent years, high-throughput plant phenotyping methods are being developed to increase the accuracy and efficiency for crop trait evaluations. In this stud...

Pulse crops, such as chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.), serve as excellent food sources that provide proteins and minerals to humans and livestock. Additionally, pulses are important sources of soil nitrogen in rotational cropping systems. However, pulse production is limited by several biotic and abiotic stress factors. One such disease is Ascochyta b...

Pea (Pisum sativum L) and chickpea (Cicer arietinum L) are important grain legumes grown in the Palouse region of the Pacific Northwest United States. The USDA-ARS grain legume breeding program in this region focuses on developing pea and chickpea varieties with high yield potential, resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses, and superior agronomic...

Core Ideas Water stress in multiple quinoa varieties were introduced. Remote sensing technologies were evaluated to assess water stress response. Handheld and unmanned aerial system based sensors provided reliable data. Thermal imaging data could capture stress in quinoa varieties. Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) is a crop known for its toleran...

Washington State produces about 70% of total fresh market apples in the United States. One of the primary goals of apple breeding programs is the development of new cultivars resistant to devastating diseases such as fire blight. The overall objective of this study was to investigate high-throughput phenotyping techniques to evaluate fire blight di...

Field pea cultivars are constantly improved through breeding programs to enhance biotic and abiotic stress tolerance and increase seed yield potential. In pea breeding, the Above Ground Biomass (AGBM) is assessed due to its influence on seed yield, canopy closure, and weed suppression. It is also the primary yield component for peas used as a cover...

Aphanomyces root rot (ARR) is a soil-borne disease that results in severe yield losses in lentil. The development of resistant cultivars is one of the key strategies to control this pathogen. However, the evaluation of disease severity is limited to visual scores that can be subjective. This study utilized image-based phenotyping approaches to eval...

In this study, 3D light detection and ranging (LiDAR) and an inertial measurement unit (IMU) were integrated on a ground vehicle for mapping tree fruit crops. A custom interface was developed in robot operating system for synchronous communication with hardware modules and for continuous field data collection. Point cloud data processing methods we...

Plant breeding has significantly improved in recent years; however, phenotyping remains a bottleneck, as the process of evaluating and measuring plant traits is often expensive, subjective, and laborious. Although commercial phenotyping systems are available, factors like cost, space, and need for specific controlled-environment conditions limit th...

This study investigates the applicability of ground-based 3D time-of-flight (ToF) imaging and small unmanned aerial system (UAS) integrated multispectral imaging as a rapid grapevine canopy vigour mapping tool for decision support during crop production management. Direct root-zone deficit irrigation was applied to grapevines with continuous and pu...

Phenotyping traits in large field crop trials with numerous breeding lines is an arduous task. Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) based remote sensing is currently being investigated for high-throughput agricultural field phenotyping applications. The system is conducive for rapid assessment of crop response to the environment, at a desired spatio-tempo...

Stomatal conductance is a critical regulating factor in plant water relations and responses to abiotic stress. Abscisic acid (ABA) is one of the plant hormones that regulates stomatal conductance and leaf transpiration. The presence of endogenous or exogenous ABA induces stomatal closure, which reduces leaf transpiration rates and increases toleran...

Potato tuber length to width (L/W) ratio is an indicator of shape phenotype, which is an important quality trait assessed in breeding and variety development. The standard method of measurement using calipers is labor intensive and time consuming. In this study, an image acquisition system was integrated with an automated potato sizer to capture vi...

Bitter pit is one of the most important disorders in apples. Some of the fresh market apple varieties are susceptible to bitter pit disorder. In this study, visible–near-infrared spectrometry-based reflectance spectral data (350–2500 nm) were acquired from 2014, 2015 and 2016 harvest produce after 63 days of storage at 5 °C. Selected spectral featu...

Image-based evaluation of phenotypic traits has been applied for plant architecture, seed, canopy growth/vigor, and root characterization. However, such applications using computer vision have not been exploited for the purpose of assessing the coleoptile length and herbicide injury in seeds. In this study, high-throughput phenotyping using digital...

Precision irrigation management is based on the accuracy and feasibility of sensor data assessing the plant water status. Multispectral and thermal infrared images acquired from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) were analyzed to evaluate the applicability of the data in the assessment of variants of subsurface irrigation configurations. The study wa...

Plant emergence and stand establishment are key indicators of early crop development that are routinely assessed in potato agronomy and crop improvement research. The standard method for evaluating emergence is through manual plant counts at regular intervals. In this proof-of-concept study, unmanned aerial vehicles integrated with multispectral im...

Bitter pit is a physiological disorder in apples. Several major apple varieties are susceptible to this disorder that poses a great challenge to growers and the associated industry as it significantly reduces the produce utilization value and marketability. The current method of bitter pit detection is through visual assessment of symptoms. Near in...

Bitter pit and healthy ‘Honeycrisp’, ‘Golden Delicious’, and ‘Granny Smith’ apples were collected from three commercial orchards. Apples were scanned using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometers to associate the elemental profile with bitter pit occurrence in apples. The FTIR spectra were acquired from apple pe...

Anti-hail (protective) netting was originally developed to protect horticultural crops from hail damage. Netting reduces the amount and modifies the light reaching the orchard canopy. It also has the potential to optimize conditions for canopy and fruit growth and mitigate abiotic stress as climate change leads to increased temperatures. This study...

Plant breeding programs are working towards developing new high-yielding crop varieties to accommodate the increasing demand for food. However, high-throughput phenotyping remains to be the bottleneck that is currently limiting the complete breeding potential. In this project, a 3D robotic system was developed to conduct automated high-throughput p...

Bitter pit is an economically important physiological disorder in apples resulting in serious economic losses. Current visual assessment techniques are not completely useful in evaluating the extent of bitter pit development as they are limited to external symptoms. An X-ray computer tomography (CT) based imaging and associated image processing alg...

Potato tuber length to width (L/W) ratio is a critical crop trait evaluated during the development and selection of new cultivars to assess the effects of environment and management on tuber size and shape. The major challenges in manual measurement of L/W ratio are that it is labor-intensive, time consuming, and sometimes inconsistent. A high-thro...

Crop loss assessment after an event of hailstorm can be inaccurate, subjective, and time consuming with the conventional method. Low-altitude, high-resolution aerial imaging using an unmanned aerial vehicle can be utilized for rapid assessment of target crops in a large scale, which can potentially improve the evaluation procedure. The goal of this...

Bitter pit is a physiological disorder that is defined as brown, corky and roundish lesions, which can develop in apples before and after harvest. This disorder greatly reduces the product utilization value of the fruit, and can result in several million dollar economic loss to the apple industry. Computed Tomography (CT) imaging is a non-destructi...

Abiotic stress tolerance in dry bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) is complex. Increased population sizes are contributing to finding QTL conditioning stress response but phenotyping has not kept pace with high throughput genotyping for such studies. Our objectives were to determine effectiveness of 20 most tolerant and 20 most susceptible lines represen...

Increased water demands have forced agriculture industry to investigate better irrigation management strategies in crop production. Efficient irrigation systems, improved irrigation scheduling, and selection of crop varieties with better water-use efficiencies can aid towards conserving water. In an ongoing experiment carried on in Red Mountain Ame...

In plant breeding, one of the biggest obstacles in genetic improvement is the lack of proven rapid methods for measuring plant responses in field conditions. Therefore, the major objective of this research was to evaluate the feasibility of utilizing high-throughput remote sensing technology for rapid measurement of phenotyping traits in legume cro...

Ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) has been employed successfully to detect chemicals such as explosives, illicit drugs, chemical warfare agents, pharmaceutical chemicals, and environmental pollutants. However, applications of IMS in pre- and post-harvest agriculture production management has not explored adequately. Characteristics such as high sensi...

Water limitations decrease stomatal conductance (gs) and, in turn, photosynthetic rate (Anet), resulting in decreased crop productivity. The current techniques for evaluating these physiological responses are limited to leaf-level measures acquired by measuring leaf-level gas exchange. In this regard, proximal sensing techniques can be a useful too...

Small unmanned aerial systems (UAS) are gaining global attention for rapid image-based decision making in agricultural production. In this study, the aim was to evaluate UAS-based imagery for rapid assessment of wheat winter survival and spring stand in winter wheat production and crop necrosis in potato production. Both are critical aspects of fie...

The physical growing environment of winter wheat can critically be affected by micro-climatic and seasonal changes in a given agroclimatic zone. Therefore, winter wheat breeding efforts across the globe focus heavily on emergence and winter survival, as these traits must first be accomplished before yield potential can be evaluated. In this study,...

Potato virus Y (PVY) is a prevalent and contagious viral disease that results in significant economic and production losses in potatoes. The symptoms of this virus on the plant vary according to strain of the virus, but the common symptoms are known as severe mosaic or leaflet necrosis. Some leaves get mottled or distorted and leaves fall off. Ther...

Wheat crop height is an important agronomic trait related with plant type and yield potential. During plant breeding, this agronomic trait is often evaluated to assess plant growth rate and overall plant height, and its association with yield potential. Therefore, in this research, we present the development of a winter and spring wheat crop height...

Nutrient assessment and management are important to maintain productivity in citrus orchards. In this study, laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) was applied for rapid and realtime detection of citrus anomalies. Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy spectra were collected from citrus leaves with anomalies such as diseases (Huanglongbing, citr...

In chickpeas, the seed size is a critical phenotype that needs to be evaluated carefully during variety development. The sieve analysis used for determining seed size distribution in legumes is labor intensive and time consuming method. An image-based method for sizing chickpeas seeds was developed in this study. Samples from a total of 72 plots fr...

Basal stem rot (BSR) is a fatal fungal (Ganoderma) disease of oil palm plantations and has a significant impact on the production of palm oil in Malaysia. Because there is no effective treatment to control this disease, early detection of BSR is vital for sustainable disease management. The limitations of visual detection have led to an interest in...

The mid- and far-infrared spectra include wavelengths from 3 μm to 1 mm. This spectral band contains lower radiation energy than visible spectra. In this chapter, mid- and far-infrared imaging and spectroscopy techniques and their applications in food and agriculture are discussed. © 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. All rights are reserved.

Electromagnetic radiation is a form of energy released and absorbed by charged particles. This radiation has specific electrical and magnetic properties. The wavelength range corresponding to the electromagnetic radiation is termed the 'electromagnetic spectrum.' The way in which the electromagnetic spectrum interacts with any material can be used...

Water stress is a serious concern in the citrus industry due to its effect on citrus quality and yield. A sensor system for early detection will allow rapid implementation of control measures and management decisions to reduce any adverse effects. Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) presents a potentially suitable technique for early stress...

We have used fluorescence imaging spectroscopy to investigate Huanglongbing disease in USA and Brazil. Texture features were extracted and used as input into classifier. Results show differences between leaves collected in Brazil and USA.

Plant systems are frequently important agriculture commodity crops, and it can be critical to track emerging pathogen infections or nutrient deficiencies that can limit or prevent food production. While some methods have been developed for in field monitoring, they are frequently invasive and not rapid. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are produce...