Mapping Cynodon dactylon in vineyards using UAV images for site-specific weed control

Abstract

In Spain, the use of annual cover crops is a crop management practice for irrigated vineyards that allows controlling vineyard vigor and yield, which also leads to improve the crop quality. Recently, Cynodon dactylon (bermudagrass) has been reported to infest those cover crops and colonize the grapevine rows, resulting in significant yield and economic losses due to the competition for water and nutrients. From timely unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery, the objective of this research was to map C. dactylon patches in order to provide an optimized site-specific weed management. A quadrocopter UAV equipped with a point-and-shoot camera was used to collect a set of aerial red-green-blue (RGB) images over a commercial vineyard plot, coinciding with the dormant period of C. dactylon (February 2016). Object-based image analysis (OBIA) techniques were used to develop an innovative algorithm for early discrimination and mapping of C. dactylon, which had the ability to solve the limitation of spectral similarity of this weed with cover crops or bare soil. As a general result, the classified maps of the studied vineyard showed four main classes, i.e. vine, cover crop, C. dactylon and bare soil, with 85% overall accuracy. These weed maps allow developing new strategies for site-specific control of C. dactylon populations in the context of precision viticulture.