DEVELOPMENT OF CROP SPECTRA FOR VARIATIONS IN NITROGEN AND WATER APPLIED IN UNREGULATED FARMER’S FIELD PLOTS BASED ON SPECTRAL SIMILARITY WITH SPECTRA COLLECTED FROM REGULATED TEST FIELD PLOTS

Abstract

Abstract. To develop crop spectra for variation in application of nitrogen (as fertilizer) and water at farmer’s field plots is very difficult as there are large variations in nitrogen and water applied also time of applications were different. During field visit it was found that various crops growth was not uniform in the study area even though local conditions (seed quality, soil and weather) were same this is possible due to variation in application of nitrogen and water. Development of crop spectra for nitrogen and water variations for unregulated farmer’s field plots based on spectral similarity analysis with regulated test field plots (where required amount of nitrogen and water applied at appropriate time) provides a fresh opportunity to develop and evaluate the crop spectra for nitrogen and water variations for real time applications. Spectral Information Divergence (SID) based spectral similarity analysis was carried out among spectra collected from unregulated farmer’s field plots and regulated test field plots for chickpea, sorghum and wheat crops. An average SID values equivalent to coefficient of correlation computed for four groups of nitrogen and water variations for chickpea, sorghum and wheat were 0.998, 0.996 and 0.994 respectively.