Abstract
Food security is one of the burning issues in the 21st century, as a tremendous population growth over recent decades has increased demand for food production systems. However, agricultural production is constrained by the limited availability of arable land resources, whereas a significant part of these is already degraded due to overexploitation. In order to get optimum output from the available land resources, it is of prime importance that crops are monitored, analyzed, and mapped at various stages of growth so that the areas having underdeveloped/unhealthy plants can be treated appropriately as and when required. This type of monitoring can be performed using ultra-high-resolution earth observation data like the images captured through unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)/drones. The objective of this research is to estimate and analyze the above-ground biomass (AGB) of the wheat crop using a consumer-grade red-green-blue (RGB) camera mounted on a drone. AGB and yield of wheat were estimated from linear regression models involving plant height obtained from crop surface models (CSMs) derived from the images captured by the drone-mounted camera. This study estimated plant height in an integrated setting of UAV-derived images with a Mid-Western Terai topographic setting (67 to 300 m amsl) of Nepal. Plant height estimated from the drone images had an error of 5% to 11.9% with respect to direct field measurement. While R2 of 0.66 was found for AGB, that of 0.73 and 0.70 were found for spike and grain weights respectively. This statistical quality assurance contributes to crop yield estimation, and hence to develop efficient food security strategies using earth observation and geo-information.
Highlights
Food security is one of the burning issues in the 21st century [1,2]
Accuracy assessment of ortho-mosaics prepared from drone images from different wheat growth growth stages
The results show that Demonstration Plot D and Trial Plot T5 had the lowest average plant height in January
Summary
The world, with an ever-growing population, has increased demands on food production systems [1]. Agricultural production is inadequate due to the limited availability of arable land resources that are degraded due to overexploitation, and it poses a threat to food security to a significant part of the society since it limits the yield of the crops, compels farmers to apply more inputs, and may force the farmers to abandon the agricultural land [3]. The production has been increased by the use of efficient technologies and high yielding varieties of various cereals, low-income countries like Nepal lag behind in these areas. To get the optimum output from the limited resources, it is of prime importance that crops are monitored, analyzed, and mapped at various stages of growth so that the areas affected by underdeveloped/unhealthy plants can be treated properly and as early as possible [10].
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