Spectral responses of soybean leaflets crops to different water conditions and tillage systems

Abstract

The state of Rio Grande do Sul is one of the greatest Brazilian soybean producers, which justifies the use of remote sensing techniques for monitoring areas occupied by this crop. The purpose of this work was to characterize throughout the crop cycle the variability of spectral responses of soybean leaflets, subjected to different conditions of soil tillage and water supply. The experiment was carried out in a 0.5 ha area, located in Eldorado do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul State, southern Brazil, in two systems of soil tillage (no-tillage and conventional tillage) and two levels of water supply (irrigated and non-irrigated). The cultivar Fepagro RS-10 was sown in a row spacing of 0.40 m and in a population of 400,000 plants per hectare. An integrating sphere of a spectroradiometer LI-COR, model LI-1800 was used for measuring the absorbance, reflectance, transmittance on soybean leaflets. The results showed that the pattern of the incident radiation partitioning in the reflectance, transmittance and absorbance components is influenced by the crop phenological stage and by the tillage system. Despite this, there is stability on the reflectance of soybean leaflets in the red and infrared portions of the electromagnetic spectrum, throughout the crop cycle. The inversely proportional relation between absorbance and reflectance of soybean leaflets revealed viability on the reflectance data, in monitoring of agricultural crops.