Acta Agriculturae Zhejiangensis ›› 2023, Vol. 35 ›› Issue (12): 2966-2976.DOI: 10.3969/j.issn.1004-1524.20221748

• Biosystems Engineering • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Estimation of above-ground biomass of winter wheat based on vegetation indexes and texture features of multispectral images captured by unmanned aerial vehicle

ZHU Yongji1,2(), TAO Xinyu1,2, CHEN Xiaofang1,2, SU Xiangxiang1,2, LIU Jikai1,2, LI Xinwei1,2,*()   

  1. 1. College of Resource and Environment, Anhui Science and Technology University, Fengyang 233100, Anhui, China
    2. Agricultural Waste Fertilizer Utilization and Cultivated Land Quality Improvement Engineering Research Center, Anhui Province, Fengyang 233100, Anhui, China
  • Received:2022-12-05 Online:2023-12-25 Published:2023-12-27

Abstract:

In order to achieve efficient non-destructive monitoring of winter wheat biomass, a field experiment was carried out from 2020 to 2021. Multispectral images were collected at 6 key growth stages by DJI Phantom 4 Multispectral (P4M) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The correlations within the above-ground biomass (AGB) of winter wheat, vegeatation indexes and texture features of the multispectral images were analyzed, the characteristic variables were screened, and the linear regression, partial least squares regression (PLSR), random forest (RF) methods were used to construct biomass estimation models with different combinations of characteristic variables. It was shown that the correlation between vegetation index and winter wheat AGB was higher than that between texture feature and winter wheat AGB. The combination of vegetation index and texture feature could effectively reduce the spectral saturation at growth stages, and improve the estimation accuracy. For the AGB estimation based on linear regression with the screened characteristic variable(s), the performace at booting and mature stages was good; while for the the AGB estimation based on PLSR and RF, the performance at heading stage was good. In general, texture features coupled with vegetation indexes could effectively improve the estimation accuracy of winter wheat AGB. Estimation of winter wheat AGB via consumer-grade UAV was feasible at small and medium scales.

Key words: unmanned aerial vehicle, multispectral, winter wheat, biomass, texture features, vegetation index

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