SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR AUTOMATED HYPERSPECTRAL VEGETATION INDEX DERIVATION FOR HIGH-THROUGHPUT PLANT PHENOTYPING

The present invention is directed to a method for automated hyperspectral vegetation index (VI) determination, including: accessing measured spectra and respective measured ground truth values of a selected vegetation trait; accessing a library of VI models, each model including a relationship defining an index value for the vegetation trait by mathematically combining spectral measurement values at a plurality of wavebands; selecting a VI model from the library; generating a hyperparameter for each of the spectral measurement values of the selected model, the hyperparameter including a selected waveband for each of the plurality of model wavebands; evaluating the selected model with the selected wavebands with an objective function score; a model parameter tuning step using an optimizer to select the waveband for each of the at least two wavebands based on sequential model-based optimization (SMBO); and repeating the model selection, generation, evaluation and tuning steps for a plurality of iterations.