scholarly journals Assessment of Regression Models for Predicting Rice Yield and Protein Content Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle-Based Multispectral Imagery

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 1508
Author(s):  
Yeseong Kang ◽  
Jinwoo Nam ◽  
Younggwang Kim ◽  
Seongtae Lee ◽  
Deokgyeong Seong ◽  
...  

Unmanned aerial vehicle-based multispectral imagery including five spectral bands (blue, green, red, red-edge, and near-infrared) for a rice field in the ripening stage was used to develop regression models for predicting the rice yield and protein content and to select the most suitable regression analysis method for the year-invariant model: partial least squares regression, ridge regression, and artificial neural network (ANN). The regression models developed with six vegetation indices (green normalization difference vegetation index (GNDVI), normalization difference red-edge index (NDRE), chlorophyll index red edge (CIrededge), difference NIR/Green green difference vegetation index (GDVI), green-red NDVI (GRNDVI), and medium resolution imaging spectrometer terrestrial chlorophyll index (MTCI)), calculated from the spectral bands, were applied to single years (2018, 2019, and 2020) and multiple years (2018 + 2019, 2018 + 2020, 2019 + 2020, and all years). The regression models were cross-validated through mutual prediction against the vegetation indices in nonoverlapping years, and the prediction errors were evaluated via root mean squared error of prediction (RMSEP). The ANN model was reproducible, with low and sustained prediction errors of 24.2 kg/1000 m2 ≤ RMSEP ≤ 59.1 kg/1000 m2 in rice yield and 0.14% ≤ RMSEP ≤ 0.28% in rice-protein content in all single-year and multiple-year analyses. When the importance of each vegetation index of the regression models was evaluated, only the ANN model showed the same ranking in the vegetation index of the first (MTCI in both rice yield and protein content) and second importance (CIrededge in rice yield and GRNDVI in rice-protein content). Overall, this means that the ANN model has the highest potential for developing a year-invariant model with stable RMSEP and consistent variable ranking.

Sensors ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (11) ◽  
pp. 3965 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liang Zhao ◽  
Zhigang Liu ◽  
Shan Xu ◽  
Xue He ◽  
Zhuoya Ni ◽  
...  

The fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (FPAR) is a key variable in the model of vegetation productivity. Vegetation indices (VIs) that were derived from instantaneous remote-sensing data have been successfully used to estimate the FPAR of a day or a longer period. However, it has not yet been verified whether continuous VIs can be used to accurately estimate the diurnal dynamics of a vegetation canopy FPAR, which may fluctuate dramatically within a day. In this study, we measured the high temporal resolution spectral data (480 to 850 nm) and FPAR data of a maize canopy from the jointing stage to the tasseling stage under different irrigation and illumination conditions using two automatic observation systems. To estimate the FPAR, we developed regression models based on a quadratic function using 13 kinds of VIs. The results show the following: (1) Under nondrought conditions, although the illumination condition (sunny or cloudy) influenced the trend of the canopy diurnal FPAR, it had only a slight effect on the model accuracies of the FPAR-VIs. The maximum coefficients of determination (R2) of the FPAR-VIs models generated for the sunny nondrought data, the cloudy nondrought data, and all of the nondrought data were 0.895, 0.88, and 0.828, respectively. The VIs—including normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), green NDVI (GNDVI), red-edge simple ratio (SR705), modified simple ratio 2 (mSR2), red-edge normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI705), and enhanced vegetation index (EVI)—that were related to the canopy structure had higher estimation accuracies (R2 > 0.8) than the other VIs that were related to the soil adjustment, chlorophyll, and physiology. The estimation accuracies of the GNDVI and some red-edge VIs (including NDVI705, SR705, and mSR2) were higher than the estimation accuracy of the NDVI. (2) Under drought stress, the FPAR decreased significantly because of leaf wilting and the effective leaf area index decrease around noon. When we included drought data in the model, accuracies were reduced dramatically and the R2 value of the best model was only 0.59. When we built the regression models based only on drought data, the EVI, which can weaken the influence of soil, had the best estimate accuracy (R2 = 0.68).


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (16) ◽  
pp. 2618
Author(s):  
Łukasz Jełowicki ◽  
Konrad Sosnowicz ◽  
Wojciech Ostrowski ◽  
Katarzyna Osińska-Skotak ◽  
Krzysztof Bakuła

This research is related to the exploitation of multispectral imagery from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in the assessment of damage to rapeseed after winter. Such damage is one of a few cases for which reimbursement may be claimed in agricultural insurance. Since direct measurements are difficult in such a case, mainly because of large, unreachable areas, it is therefore important to be able to use remote sensing in the assessment of the plant surface affected by frost damage. In this experiment, UAV images were taken using a Sequoia multispectral camera that collected data in four spectral bands: green, red, red-edge, and near-infrared. Data were acquired from three altitudes above the ground, which resulted in different ground sampling distances. Within several tests, various vegetation indices, calculated based on four spectral bands, were used in the experiment (normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), normalized difference vegetation index—red edge (NDVI_RE), optimized soil adjusted vegetation index (OSAVI), optimized soil adjusted vegetation index—red edge (OSAVI_RE), soil adjusted vegetation index (SAVI), soil adjusted vegetation index—red edge (SAVI_RE)). As a result, selected vegetation indices were provided to classify the areas which qualified for reimbursement due to frost damage. The negative influence of visible technical roads was proved and eliminated using OBIA (object-based image analysis) to select and remove roads from classified images selected for classification. Detection of damaged areas was performed using three different approaches, one object-based and two pixel-based. Different ground sampling distances and different vegetation indices were tested within the experiment, which demonstrated the possibility of using the modern low-altitude photogrammetry of a UAV platform with a multispectral sensor in applications related to agriculture. Within the tests performed, it was shown that detection using UAV-based multispectral data can be a successful alternative for direct measurements in a field to estimate the area of winterkill damage. The best results were achieved in the study of damage detection using OSAVI and NDVI and images with ground sampling distance (GSD) = 10 cm, with an overall classification accuracy of 95% and a F1-score value of 0.87. Other results of approaches with different flight settings and vegetation indices were also promising.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 2755
Author(s):  
Peng Fang ◽  
Nana Yan ◽  
Panpan Wei ◽  
Yifan Zhao ◽  
Xiwang Zhang

The net primary productivity (NPP) and aboveground biomass mapping of crops based on remote sensing technology are not only conducive to understanding the growth and development of crops but can also be used to monitor timely agricultural information, thereby providing effective decision making for agricultural production management. To solve the saturation problem of the NDVI in the aboveground biomass mapping of crops, the original CASA model was improved using narrow-band red-edge information, which is sensitive to vegetation chlorophyll variation, and the fraction of photosynthetically active radiation (FPAR), NPP, and aboveground biomass of winter wheat and maize were mapped in the main growing seasons. Moreover, in this study, we deeply analyzed the seasonal change trends of crops’ biophysical parameters in terms of the NDVI, FPAR, actual light use efficiency (LUE), and their influence on aboveground biomass. Finally, to analyze the uncertainty of the aboveground biomass mapping of crops, we further discussed the inversion differences of FPAR with different vegetation indices. The results demonstrated that the inversion accuracies of the FPAR of the red-edge normalized vegetation index (NDVIred-edge) and red-edge simple ratio vegetation index (SRred-edge) were higher than those of the original CASA model. Compared with the reference data, the accuracy of aboveground biomass estimated by the improved CASA model was 0.73 and 0.70, respectively, which was 0.21 and 0.13 higher than that of the original CASA model. In addition, the analysis of the FPAR inversions of different vegetation indices showed that the inversion accuracies of the red-edge vegetation indices NDVIred-edge and SRred-edge were higher than those of the other vegetation indices, which confirmed that the vegetation indices involving red-edge information can more effectively retrieve FPAR and aboveground biomass of crops.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (22) ◽  
pp. 3684
Author(s):  
Jie Jiang ◽  
Zeyu Zhang ◽  
Qiang Cao ◽  
Yan Liang ◽  
Brian Krienke ◽  
...  

Using remote sensing to rapidly acquire large-area crop growth information (e.g., shoot biomass, nitrogen status) is an urgent demand for modern crop production; unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) acts as an effective monitoring platform. In order to improve the practicability and efficiency of UAV based monitoring technique, four field experiments involving different nitrogen (N) rates (0–360 kg N ha−1) and seven winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) varieties were conducted at different eco-sites (Sihong, Rugao, and Xinghua) during 2015–2019. A multispectral active canopy sensor (RapidSCAN CS-45; Holland Scientific Inc., Lincoln, NE, USA) mounted on a multirotor UAV platform was used to collect the canopy spectral reflectance data of winter wheat at key growth stages, three growth parameters (leaf area index (LAI), leaf dry matter (LDM), plant dry matter (PDM)) and three N indicators (leaf N accumulation (LNA), plant N accumulation (PNA) and N nutrition index (NNI)) were measured synchronously. The quantitative linear relationships between spectral data and six growth indices were systematically analyzed. For monitoring growth and N nutrition status at Feekes stages 6.0–10.0, 10.3–11.1 or entire growth stages, red edge ratio vegetation index (RERVI), red edge chlorophyll index (CIRE) and difference vegetation index (DVI) performed the best among the red edge band-based and red-based vegetation indices, respectively. Across all growth stages, DVI was highly correlated with LAI (R2 = 0.78), LDM (R2 = 0.61), PDM (R2 = 0.63), LNA (R2 = 0.65) and PNA (R2 = 0.73), whereas the relationships between RERVI (R2 = 0.62), CIRE (R2 = 0.62) and NNI had high coefficients of determination. The developed models performed better in monitoring growth indices and N status at Feekes stages 10.3–11.1 than Feekes stages 6.0–10.0. To sum it up, the UAV-mounted active sensor system is able to rapidly monitor the growth and N nutrition status of winter wheat and can be deployed for UAV-based remote-sensing of crops.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (22) ◽  
pp. 2667 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiang ◽  
Cai ◽  
Zheng ◽  
Cheng ◽  
Tian ◽  
...  

Commercially available digital cameras can be mounted on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for crop growth monitoring in open-air fields as a low-cost, highly effective observation system. However, few studies have investigated their potential for nitrogen (N) status monitoring, and the performance of camera-derived vegetation indices (VIs) under different conditions remains poorly understood. In this study, five commonly used VIs derived from normal color (RGB) images and two typical VIs derived from color near-infrared (CIR) images were used to estimate leaf N concentration (LNC). To explore the potential of digital cameras for monitoring LNC at all crop growth stages, two new VIs were proposed, namely, the true color vegetation index (TCVI) from RGB images and the false color vegetation index (FCVI) from CIR images. The relationships between LNC and the different VIs varied at different stages. The commonly used VIs performed well at some stages, but the newly proposed TCVI and FCVI had the best performance at all stages. The performances of the VIs with red (or near-infrared) and green bands as the numerator were limited by saturation at intermediate to high LNCs (LNC > 3.0%), but the TCVI and FCVI had the ability to mitigate the saturation. The results of model validations further supported the superiority of the TCVI and FCVI for LNC estimation. Compared to the other VIs derived using RGB cameras, the relative root mean square errors (RRMSEs) of the TCVI were improved by 8.6% on average. For the CIR images, the best-performing VI for LNC was the FCVI (R2 = 0.756, RRMSE = 14.18%). The LNC–TCVI and LNC–FCVI were stable under different cultivars, N application rates, and planting densities. The results confirmed the applicability of UAV-based RGB and CIR cameras for crop N status monitoring under different conditions, which should assist the precision management of N fertilizers in agronomic practices.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naichen Xing ◽  
Wenjiang Huang ◽  
Qiaoyun Xie ◽  
Yue Shi ◽  
Huichun Ye ◽  
...  

Leaf area index (LAI) is a key parameter in plant growth monitoring. For several decades, vegetation indices-based empirical method has been widely-accepted in LAI retrieval. A growing number of spectral indices have been proposed to tailor LAI estimations, however, saturation effect has long been an obstacle. In this paper, we classify the selected 14 vegetation indices into five groups according to their characteristics. In this study, we proposed a new index for LAI retrieval-transformed triangular vegetation index (TTVI), which replaces NIR and red bands of triangular vegetation index (TVI) into NIR and red-edge bands. All fifteen indices were calculated and analyzed with both hyperspectral and multispectral data. Best-fit models and k-fold cross-validation were conducted. The results showed that TTVI performed the best predictive power of LAI for both hyperspectral and multispectral data, and mitigated the saturation effect. The R2 and RMSE values were 0.60, 1.12; 0.59, 1.15, respectively. Besides, TTVI showed high estimation accuracy for sparse (LAI < 4) and dense canopies (LAI > 4). Our study provided the value of the Red-edge bands of the Sentinel-2 satellite sensors in crop LAI retrieval, and demonstrated that the new index TTVI is applicable to inverse LAI for both low-to-moderate and moderate-to-high vegetation cover.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 1176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yukun Lin ◽  
Zhe Zhu ◽  
Wenxuan Guo ◽  
Yazhou Sun ◽  
Xiaoyuan Yang ◽  
...  

Monitoring cotton status during the growing season is critical in increasing production efficiency. The water status in cotton is a key factor for yield and cotton quality. Stem water potential (SWP) is a precise indicator for assessing cotton water status. Satellite remote sensing is an effective approach for monitoring cotton growth at a large scale. The aim of this study is to estimate cotton water stress at a high temporal frequency and at a large scale. In this study, we measured midday SWP samples according to the acquisition dates of Sentinel-2 images and used them to build linear-regression-based and machine-learning-based models to estimate cotton water stress during the growing season (June to August, 2018). For the linear-regression-based method, we estimated SWP based on different Sentinel-2 spectral bands and vegetation indices, where the normalized difference index 45 (NDI45) achieved the best performance (R2 = 0.6269; RMSE = 3.6802 (-1*swp (bars))). For the machine-learning-based method, we used random forest regression to estimate SWP and received even better results (R2 = 0.6709; RMSE = 3.3742 (-1*swp (bars))). To find the best selection of input variables for the machine-learning-based approach, we tried three different data input datasets, including (1) 9 original spectral bands (e.g., blue, green, red, red edge, near infrared (NIR), and shortwave infrared (SWIR)), (2) 21 vegetation indices, and (3) a combination of original Sentinel-2 spectral bands and vegetation indices. The highest accuracy was achieved when only the original spectral bands were used. We also found the SWIR and red edge band were the most important spectral bands, and the vegetation indices based on red edge and NIR bands were particularly helpful. Finally, we applied the best approach for the linear-regression-based and the machine-learning-based methods to generate cotton water potential maps at a large scale and high temporal frequency. Results suggests that the methods developed here has the potential for continuous monitoring of SWP at large scales and the machine-learning-based method is preferred.


Author(s):  
M. Ustuner ◽  
F. B. Sanli ◽  
S. Abdikan ◽  
M. T. Esetlili ◽  
Y. Kurucu

Cutting-edge remote sensing technology has a significant role for managing the natural resources as well as the any other applications about the earth observation. Crop monitoring is the one of these applications since remote sensing provides us accurate, up-to-date and cost-effective information about the crop types at the different temporal and spatial resolution. In this study, the potential use of three different vegetation indices of RapidEye imagery on crop type classification as well as the effect of each indices on classification accuracy were investigated. The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), the Green Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (GNDVI), and the Normalized Difference Red Edge Index (NDRE) are the three vegetation indices used in this study since all of these incorporated the near-infrared (NIR) band. RapidEye imagery is highly demanded and preferred for agricultural and forestry applications since it has red-edge and NIR bands. The study area is located in Aegean region of Turkey. Radial Basis Function (RBF) kernel was used here for the Support Vector Machines (SVMs) classification. Original bands of RapidEye imagery were excluded and classification was performed with only three vegetation indices. The contribution of each indices on image classification accuracy was also tested with single band classification. Highest classification accuracy of 87, 46 % was obtained using three vegetation indices. This obtained classification accuracy is higher than the classification accuracy of any dual-combination of these vegetation indices. Results demonstrate that NDRE has the highest contribution on classification accuracy compared to the other vegetation indices and the RapidEye imagery can get satisfactory results of classification accuracy without original bands.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-22
Author(s):  
Siva K. Balasundram ◽  
Yen Mee Chong

Potassium (K) nutrition in pineapple grown on tropical peat can be problematic due to high precipitation which encourages leaching losses. Non-destructive tools that can assess K deficiency and the accompanying changes in biophysical and biochemical properties within pineapple is a good strategy to employ. In this study, we assessed the biophysical changes in pineapple (var. MD2) in response to different K rates by using a hyperspectral approach. K deficiency was detected at 171 days after planting. Shortage of K also exhibited a shift in red edge towards shorter wavelengths between 500-700 nm. In addition, spectral ranges of 430-680 nm, as well as 680-752 nm were found to be most effective in differentiating spectral response to varying K rates. Three vegetation indices, i.e. Normalized Pigment Chlorophyll Index (NPCI), Plant Senescence Index (PSRI) and Red-edge Vegetation Index (RVSI) were found to best describe K treatment effects on pineapple canopy reflectance. This study could be extended further to include pineapple varieties other than MD2, and also key nutrients, such as N and P, for better fertilizer management in peat-grown pineapple.


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