Abstract
Colorado potato beetle (CPB) adults and larvae devour leaves of potato and other solanaceous crops and weeds, and may quickly develop resistance to pesticides. With early detection of CPB damage, more options are available for precision integrated pest management, which reduces the amount of pesticides applied in a field. Remote sensing with small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) has potential for CPB detection because low flight altitudes allow image acquisition at very high spatial resolution. A five-band multispectral sensor and up-looking incident light sensor were mounted on a six-rotor sUAS, which was flown at altitudes of 60 and 30 m in June 2014. Plants went from visibly undamaged to having some damage in just 1 day. Whole-plot normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and the number of pixels classified as damaged (0.70≤NDVI≤0.80) were not correlated with visible CPB damage ranked from least to most. Area of CPB damage estimated using object-based image analysis was highly correlated to the visual ranking of damage. Furthermore, plant height calculated using structure-from-motion point clouds was related to CPB damage, but this method required extensive operator intervention for success. Object-based image analysis has potential for early detection based on high spatial resolution sUAS remote sensing.
Highlights
Potatoes (Solanum tuberosum L.) were the first crop for which insecticides were routinely used and currently require more pesticides than other major crops.[1,2] One of the most important insect pests of potato is the Colorado potato beetle (CPB) Leptinotarsa decemlineata (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae); larvae and adults are voracious leaf eaters that can rapidly defoliate a field of potatoes.[3]
Using two plots for training areas (102 and 302), we developed simple classification rules using object mean normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) to classify the orthomosaics into three classes: healthy plants, CPB damage, and soil
The number of CPB found during the census and the visual ranking of damage was not related to the treatments of artificially applied CPB, based on a Kruskal–Wallace one-way analysis of variance test[33]
Summary
Potatoes (Solanum tuberosum L.) were the first crop for which insecticides were routinely used and currently require more pesticides than other major crops.[1,2] One of the most important insect pests of potato is the Colorado potato beetle (CPB) Leptinotarsa decemlineata (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae); larvae and adults are voracious leaf eaters that can rapidly defoliate a field of potatoes.[3]. Insect defoliation of a crop canopy may be remotely sensed by the reduction of leaf area or biomass as measured by spectral vegetation indices, such as the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI).[8,9] Early detection of CPB damage using satellites depends on overpass frequency, cloud cover, sensor pixel size, and the delivery speed of data to the user. Pixel size is an important determinant for early detection because there has to be more visible foliar damage when using larger pixels. Small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) acquire imagery at low altitudes for Journal of Applied Remote Sensing
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
