Plant phenotyping (PP) describes the physiological and biochemical properties of plants affected by both genotypes and environments. It is an emerging research field that is assisting the breeding and cultivation of new crop varieties to be more productive and resilient to challenging environments. Precision agriculture (PA) uses sensing technologies to observe crops and then manage them optimally to ensure that they grow in healthy conditions, have maximum productivity, and have minimal negative effects on the environment. Traditionally, the observation of plant traits heavily relies on human experts which is labor intensive, time-consuming, and subjective. Automatic crop traits measurement in PP and PA are two different fields, but they share the same sensing and data processing technologies in many respects. Recently, driven by computer and sensor technologies, machine vision (MV) and machine learning (ML) have contributed to accurate, high-throughput, and nondestructive plant phenotyping and precision agriculture. However, these technologies are still in their infant stage and there are many challenges and questions related to them that still need to be addressed. The goal of this Research Topic is to provide a platform to share the latest research results on the application of MV and ML for PP and PA. It aims to highlight cutting-edge technologies, bottle-necks, and future research directions for MV and ML in crop breeding, crop cultivation, disease management, weed control, and pest control.

This book discusses computer vision, a noncontact as well as a nondestructive technique involving the development of theoretical and algorithmic tools for automatic visual understanding and recognition which finds huge applications in agricultural productions. It also entails how rendering of machine learning techniques to computer vision algorithms is boosting this sector with better productivity by developing more precise systems. Computer vision and machine learning (CV-ML) helps in plant disease assessment along with crop condition monitoring to control the degradation of yield, quality, and severe financial loss for farmers. Significant scientific and technological advances have been made in defect assessment, quality grading, disease recognition, pests, insects, fruits, and vegetable types recognition and evaluation of a wide range of agricultural plants, crops, leaves, and fruits. The book discusses intelligent robots developed with the touch of CV-ML which can help farmers to perform various tasks like planting, weeding, harvesting, plant health monitoring, and so on. The topics covered in the book include plant, leaf, and fruit disease detection, crop health monitoring, applications of robots in agriculture, precision farming, assessment of product quality and defects, pest, insect, fruits, and vegetable types recognition.

Domesticated crops are the result of artificial selection for particular phenotypes or, in some cases, natural selection for an adaptive trait. Plant traits can be identified through image-based plant phenotyping, a process that was, until recently, strenous and time-consuming. Intelligent Image Analysis for Plant Phenotyping reviews information on time-saving techniques, using computer vision and imaging technologies. These methodologies provide an automated, non-invasive, and scalable mechanism by which to define and collect plant phenotypes. Beautifully illustrated, with numerous color images, the book focuses on phenotypes measured from individual plants under controlled experimental conditions, which are widely available in high-throughput systems. Features: Presents methodologies for image processing, including data-driven and machine learning techniques for plant phenotyping. Features information on advanced techniques for extracting phenotypes through images and image sequences captured in a variety of modalities. Includes real-world scientific problems, including predicting yield by modeling interactions between plant data and environmental information. Discusses the challenge of translating images into biologically informative quantitative phenotypes. A practical resource for students, researchers, and practitioners, this book is invaluable for those working in the emerging fields at the intersection of computer vision and plant sciences.

Since agriculture is one of the key parameters in assessing the gross domestic product (GDP) of any country, it has become crucial to transition from traditional agricultural practices to smart agriculture. New agricultural technologies provide numerous opportunities to maximize crop yield by recognizing and analyzing diseases and other natural variables that may affect it. Therefore, it is necessary to understand how computer-assisted technologies can best be utilized and adopted in the conversion to smart agriculture. Modern Techniques for Agricultural Disease Management and Crop Yield Prediction is an essential publication that widens the spectrum of computational methods that can aid in agriculture disease management, weed detection, and crop yield prediction. Featuring coverage on a wide range of topics such as soil and crop sensors, swarm robotics, and weed detection, this book is ideally designed for environmentalists, farmers, botanists, agricultural engineers, computer engineers, scientists, researchers, practitioners, and students seeking current research on technology and techniques for agricultural diseases and predictive trends.

A concise and self-contained introduction to causal inference, increasingly important in data science and machine learning. The mathematization of causality is a relatively recent development, and has become increasingly important in data science and machine learning. This book offers a self-contained and concise introduction to causal models and how to learn them from data. After explaining the need for causal models and discussing some of the principles underlying causal inference, the book teaches readers how to use causal models: how to compute intervention distributions, how to infer causal models from observational and interventional data, and how causal ideas could be exploited for classical machine learning problems. All of these topics are discussed first in terms of two variables and then in the more general multivariate case. The bivariate case turns out to be a particularly hard problem for causal learning because there are no conditional independences as used by classical methods for solving multivariate cases. The authors consider analyzing statistical asymmetries between cause and effect to be highly instructive, and they report on their decade of intensive research into this problem. The book is accessible to readers with a background in machine learning or statistics, and can be used in graduate courses or as a reference for researchers. The text includes code snippets that can be copied and pasted, exercises, and an appendix with a summary of the most important technical concepts.

Information modeling and knowledge bases have become an important area of academic and industry research in the 21st century, addressing complexities of modeling that reach beyond the traditional borders of information systems and academic computer science research. This book presents 32 reviewed, selected and updated papers delivered at the 29th International Conference on Information Modeling and Knowledge Bases (EJC2019), held in Lappeenranta, Finland, from 3 to 7 June 2019. In addition, two papers based on the keynote presentations and one paper edited from the discussion of the panel session are included in the book. The conference provided a forum to exchange scientific results and experience, and attracted academics and practitioners working with information and knowledge. The papers cover a wide range of topics, ranging from knowledge discovery through conceptual and linguistic modeling, knowledge and information modeling and discovery, cross-cultural communication and social computing, environmental modeling and engineering, and multimedia data modeling and systems to complex scientific problem-solving. The conference presentation sessions: Learning and Linguistics; Systems and Processes; Data and Knowledge Representation; Models and Interface; Formalizations and Reasoning; Models and Modeling; Machine Learning; Models and Programming; Environment and Predictions; and Emotion Modeling and Social Networks reflect the main themes of the conference. The book also includes 2 extended publications of keynote addresses: ‘Philosophical Foundations of Conceptual Modeling’ and ́Sustainable Solid Waste Management using Life Cycle Modeling for Environmental Impact Assessment’, as well as additional material covering the discussion and findings of the panel session. Providing an overview of current research in the field, the book will be of interest to all those working with information systems, information modeling and knowledge bases.