Leaf area index (LAI) is a fundamental indicator of plant growth status in agronomic and environmental studies. Due to rapid advances in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and sensor technologies, UAV-based remote sensing is emerging as a promising solution for monitoring crop LAI with great flexibility and applicability. This study aimed to determine the feasibility of combining color and texture information derived from UAV-based digital images for estimating LAI of rice (Oryza sativa L.). Rice field trials were conducted at two sites using different nitrogen application rates, varieties, and transplanting methods during 2016 to 2017. Digital images were collected using a consumer-grade UAV after sampling at key growth stages of tillering, stem elongation, panicle initiation and booting. Vegetation color indices (CIs) and grey level co-occurrence matrix-based textures were extracted from mosaicked UAV ortho-images for each plot. As a solution of using indices composed by two different textures, normalized difference texture indices (NDTIs) were calculated by two randomly selected textures. The relationships between rice LAIs and each calculated index were then compared using simple linear regression. Multivariate regression models with different input sets were further used to test the potential of combining CIs with various textures for rice LAI estimation. The results revealed that the visible atmospherically resistant index (VARI) based on three visible bands and the NDTI based on the mean textures derived from the red and green bands were the best for LAI retrieval in the CI and NDTI groups, respectively. Independent accuracy assessment showed that random forest (RF) exhibited the best predictive performance when combining CI and texture inputs (R² = 0.84, RMSE = 0.87, MAE = 0.69). This study introduces a promising solution of combining color indices and textures from UAV-based digital imagery for rice LAI estimation. Future studies are needed on finding the best operation mode, suitable ground resolution, and optimal predictive methods for practical applications.

Unmanned aerial system (UAS)-based remote sensing is one promising technique for precision crop management, but few studies have reported the applications of such systems on nitrogen (N) estimation with multiple sensors in rice (Oryza sativa L.). This study aims to evaluate three sensors (RGB, color-infrared (CIR) and multispectral (MS) cameras) onboard UAS for the estimation of N status at individual stages and their combination with the field data collected from a two-year rice experiment. The experiments were conducted in 2015 and 2016, involving different N rates, planting densities and rice cultivars, with three replicates. An Oktokopter UAS was used to acquire aerial photography at early growth stages (from tillering to booting) and field samplings were taken at a near date. Two color indices (normalized excess green index (NExG), and normalized green red difference index (NGRDI)), two near infrared vegetation indices (green normalized difference vegetation index (GNDVI), and enhanced NDVI (ENDVI)) and two red edge vegetation indices (red edge chlorophyll index (CI_{red edge}), and DATT) were used to evaluate the capability of these three sensors in estimating leaf nitrogen accumulation (LNA) and plant nitrogen accumulation (PNA) in rice. The results demonstrated that the red edge vegetation indices derived from MS images produced the highest estimation accuracy for LNA (R²: 0.79–0.81, root mean squared error (RMSE): 1.43–1.45 g m⁻²) and PNA (R²: 0.81–0.84, RMSE: 2.27–2.38 g m⁻²). The GNDVI from CIR images yielded a moderate estimation accuracy with an all-stage model. Color indices from RGB images exhibited satisfactory performance for the pooled dataset of the tillering and jointing stages. Compared with the counterpart indices from the RGB and CIR images, the indices from the MS images performed better in most cases. These results may set strong foundations for the development of UAS-based rice growth monitoring systems, providing useful information for the real-time decision making on crop N management.

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based remote sensing (RS) possesses the significant advantage of being able to efficiently collect images for precision agricultural applications. Although numerous methods have been proposed to monitor crop nitrogen (N) status in recent decades, just how to utilize an appropriate modeling algorithm to estimate crop leaf N content (LNC) remains poorly understood, especially based on UAV multispectral imagery. A comparative assessment of different modeling algorithms (i.e., simple and non-parametric modeling algorithms alongside the physical model retrieval method) for winter wheat LNC estimation is presented in this study. Experiments were conducted over two consecutive years and involved different winter wheat varieties, N rates, and planting densities. A five-band multispectral camera (i.e., 490 nm, 550 nm, 671 nm, 700 nm, and 800 nm) was mounted on a UAV to acquire canopy images across five critical growth stages. The results of this study showed that the best-performing vegetation index (VI) was the modified renormalized difference VI (RDVI), which had a determination coefficient (R²) of 0.73 and a root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.38. This method was also characterized by a high processing speed (0.03 s) for model calibration and validation. Among the 13 non-parametric modeling algorithms evaluated here, the random forest (RF) approach performed best, characterized by R² and RMSE values of 0.79 and 0.33, respectively. This method also had the advantage of full optical spectrum utilization and enabled flexible, non-linear fitting with a fast processing speed (2.3 s). Compared to the other two methods assessed here, the use of a look up table (LUT)-based radiative transfer model (RTM) remained challenging with regard to LNC estimation because of low prediction accuracy (i.e., an R² value of 0.62 and an RMSE value of 0.46) and slow processing speed. The RF approach is a fast and accurate technique for N estimation based on UAV multispectral imagery.

This paper evaluates the potential of integrating textural and spectral information from unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based multispectral imagery for improving the quantification of nitrogen (N) status in rice crops. Vegetation indices (VIs), normalized difference texture indices (NDTIs), and their combination were used to estimate four N nutrition parameters leaf nitrogen concentration (LNC), leaf nitrogen accumulation (LNA), plant nitrogen concentration (PNC), and plant nitrogen accumulation (PNA). Results demonstrated that the normalized difference red-edge index (NDRE) performed best in estimating the N nutrition parameters among all the VI candidates. The optimal texture indices had comparable performance in N nutrition parameters estimation as compared to NDRE. Significant improvement for all N nutrition parameters could be obtained by integrating VIs with NDTIs using multiple linear regression. While tested across years and growth stages, the multivariate models also exhibited satisfactory estimation accuracy. For texture analysis, texture metrics calculated in the direction D3 (perpendicular to the row orientation) are recommended for monitoring row-planted crops. These findings indicate that the addition of textural information derived from UAV multispectral imagery could reduce the effects of background materials and saturation and enhance the N signals of rice canopies for the entire season.

Crop biomass is a critical variable for characterizing crop growth development, understanding dry matter partitioning, and predicting grain yield. Previous studies on the spectroscopic estimation of crop biomass focused on the use of various spectral indices based on chlorophyll absorption features and found that they often became saturated at high biomass levels. Given that crop biomass is commonly expressed as the dry weight of canopy components per unit ground area, it may be better estimated using the spectral indices that directly characterize dry matter absorption. This study aims to evaluate a group of four dry matter indices (DMIs) by comparison with a group of four chlorophyll indices (CIs) for estimating the biomass of individual components (e.g., leaves, stems) and their combinations with the field data collected from a two-year rice cultivation experiment. The Red-edge Chlorophyll Index (CI_Red-edge) of the CI group exhibited the best relationship with leaf biomass (R² = 0.82) for the whole growing season and with total biomass (R² = 0.81), but only for the growth stages before heading. However, the Normalized Difference Index for Leaf Mass per Area (ND_LMA) of the DMI group showed the best relationships with both stem biomass (R² = 0.81) and total biomass (R² = 0.81) for the whole season. This research demonstrated the suitability of dry matter indices and provided physical explanations for the superior performance of dry matter indices over chlorophyll indices for the estimation of whole-season total biomass.

Commercially available digital cameras can be mounted on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for crop growth monitoring in open-air fields as a low-cost, highly effective observation system. However, few studies have investigated their potential for nitrogen (N) status monitoring, and the performance of camera-derived vegetation indices (VIs) under different conditions remains poorly understood. In this study, five commonly used VIs derived from normal color (RGB) images and two typical VIs derived from color near-infrared (CIR) images were used to estimate leaf N concentration (LNC). To explore the potential of digital cameras for monitoring LNC at all crop growth stages, two new VIs were proposed, namely, the true color vegetation index (TCVI) from RGB images and the false color vegetation index (FCVI) from CIR images. The relationships between LNC and the different VIs varied at different stages. The commonly used VIs performed well at some stages, but the newly proposed TCVI and FCVI had the best performance at all stages. The performances of the VIs with red (or near-infrared) and green bands as the numerator were limited by saturation at intermediate to high LNCs (LNC > 3.0%), but the TCVI and FCVI had the ability to mitigate the saturation. The results of model validations further supported the superiority of the TCVI and FCVI for LNC estimation. Compared to the other VIs derived using RGB cameras, the relative root mean square errors (RRMSEs) of the TCVI were improved by 8.6% on average. For the CIR images, the best-performing VI for LNC was the FCVI (R² = 0.756, RRMSE = 14.18%). The LNC–TCVI and LNC–FCVI were stable under different cultivars, N application rates, and planting densities. The results confirmed the applicability of UAV-based RGB and CIR cameras for crop N status monitoring under different conditions, which should assist the precision management of N fertilizers in agronomic practices.