Advancements in 3D Reconstruction for Plant Phenotyping: Technologies, Applications, Challenges, and Future Directions

Recent advancements in 3D reconstruction technologies have significantly transformed plant phenotyping, enabling precise, scalable, and automated trait extraction. Traditional manual phenotyping methods are increasingly being replaced by image-based approaches, such as photogrammetry, LiDAR, RGB-D sensing, and deep learning (DL)-based techniques. These tools allow for non-destructive, high-throughput measurements of plant morphology, structure, and physiological traits. This review synthesizes the state of the art in 3D reconstruction methods, including conventional geometric algorithms and emerging DL methods, and evaluates their application across diverse plant species. In addition, we discuss the sensing modalities, evaluation metrics, and crop-specific deployments. Although promising, current technologies still face challenges in terms of computational efficiency, scalability to outdoor environments, and generalizability across crop types. This review concludes by identifying research gaps and future directions for making real-time, field-deployable 3D phenotyping systems.