The extraction of information about individual trees is essential to supporting the growing of fruit in orchard management. Data acquired from spectral sensors mounted on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have very high spatial and temporal resolution. However, an efficient and reliable method for extracting information about individual trees with irregular tree-crown shapes and a complicated background is lacking. In this study, we developed and tested the performance of an approach, based on UAV imagery, to extracting information about individual trees in an orchard with a complicated background that includes apple trees (Plot 1) and pear trees (Plot 2). The workflow involves the construction of a digital orthophoto map (DOM), digital surface models (DSMs), and digital terrain models (DTMs) using the Structure from Motion (SfM) and Multi-View Stereo (MVS) approaches, as well as the calculation of the Excess Green minus Excess Red Index (ExGR) and the selection of various thresholds. Furthermore, a local-maxima filter method and marker-controlled watershed segmentation were used for the detection and delineation, respectively, of individual trees. The accuracy of the proposed method was evaluated by comparing its results with manual estimates of the numbers of trees and the areas and diameters of tree-crowns, all three of which parameters were obtained from the DOM. The results of the proposed method are in good agreement with these manual estimates: The F-scores for the estimated numbers of individual trees were 99.0% and 99.3% in Plot 1 and Plot 2, respectively, while the Producer’s Accuracy (PA) and User’s Accuracy (UA) for the delineation of individual tree-crowns were above 95% for both of the plots. For the area of individual tree-crowns, root-mean-square error (RMSE) values of 0.72 m² and 0.48 m² were obtained for Plot 1 and Plot 2, respectively, while for the diameter of individual tree-crowns, RMSE values of 0.39 m and 0.26 m were obtained for Plot 1 (339 trees correctly identified) and Plot 2 (203 trees correctly identified), respectively. Both the areas and diameters of individual tree-crowns were overestimated to varying degrees.

Apple (Malus domestica Borkh. cv. “Fuji”), an important cash crop, is widely consumed around the world. Accurately predicting preharvest apple fruit yields is critical for planting policy making and agricultural management. This study attempted to explore an effective approach for predicting apple fruit yields based on time-series remote sensing data. In this study, time-series vegetation indices (VIs) were derived from Planet images and analyzed to further construct an accumulated VI ($\sum \mathrm{VIs}$)-based random forest (${\mathrm{RF}}_{\sum \mathrm{VI}}$) model and a Carnegie–Ames–Stanford approach (CASA) model for predicting apple fruit yields. The results showed that (1) $\sum \mathrm{NDVI}$ was the optimal predictor to construct an RF model for apple fruit yield, and the R², RMSE, and RPD values of the ${\mathrm{RF}}_{\sum \mathrm{NDVI}}$ model reached 0.71, 16.40 kg/tree, and 1.83, respectively. (2) The maximum light use efficiency was determined to be 0.499 g C/MJ, and the CASA_SR model (R² = 0.57, RMSE = 19.61 kg/tree, and RPD = 1.53) performed better than the CASA_NDVI model and the CASA_Average model (R², RMSE, and RPD = 0.56, 24.47 kg/tree, 1.22 and 0.57, 20.82 kg/tree, 1.44, respectively). (3) This study compared the yield prediction accuracies obtained by the models using the same dataset, and the ${\mathrm{RF}}_{\sum \mathrm{NDVI}}$ model (RPD = 1.83) showed a better performance in predicting apple fruit yields than the CASA_SR model (RPD = 1.53). The results obtained from this study indicated the potential of the ${\mathrm{RF}}_{\sum \mathrm{NDVI}}$ model based on time-series Planet images to accurately predict apple fruit yields. The models could provide spatial and quantitative information of apple fruit yield, which would be valuable for agronomists to predict regional apple production to inform and develop national planting policies, agricultural management, and export strategies.

The remote sensing technology provides a new means for the determination of chlorophyll content in apple trees that includes a rapid analysis, low cost and large monitoring area. The Back-Propagation Neural Network (BPNN) and the Supported Vector Machine Regression (SVMR) methods were both frequently used method to construct estimation model based on remote sensing imaging. The aim of this study was to find out which estimation model of apple tree canopy chlorophyll content based on the vegetation indices constructed with visible, red edge and near-infrared bands of the sensor of Sentinel-2 was more accurate and stabler. The results were as follows: The calibration set coefficient of determination (R²) value of 0.729 and validation set R² value of 0.667 of the model using the SVMR method based on the vegetation indices (NDVI_green + NDVI_red + NDVI_re) were higher than those of the model using the BPNN method by 8.2% and 11.0%, respectively. The calibration set root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.159 and validation set RMSE of 0.178 of the model using the SVMR method based on the vegetation indices (NDVI_green + NDVI_red + NDVI_re) were lower than those of the model using the BPNN method by 5.9% and 3.8%, respectively.

As the major nutrient affecting crop growth, accurate assessing of nitrogen (N) is crucial to precise agricultural management. Although improvements based on ground and satellite data nitrogen in monitoring crops have been made, the application of these technologies is limited by expensive costs, covering small spatial scales and low spatiotemporal resolution. This study strived to explore an effective approach for inversing and mapping the distributions of the canopy nitrogen concentration (CNC) based on Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) hyperspectral image data in a typical apple orchard area of China. A Cubert UHD185 imaging spectrometer mounted on a UAV was used to obtain the hyperspectral images of the apple canopy. The range of the apple canopy was determined by the threshold method to eliminate the effect of the background spectrum from bare soil and shadow. We analyzed and screened out the spectral parameters sensitive to CNC, including vegetation indices (VIs), random two-band spectral indices, and red-edge parameters. The partial least squares regression (PLSR) and backpropagation neural network (BPNN) were constructed to inverse CNC based on a single spectral parameter or a combination of multiple spectral parameters. The results show that when the thresholds of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and normalized difference canopy shadow index (NDCSI) were set to 0.65 and 0.45, respectively, the canopy’s CNC range could be effectively identified and extracted, which was more refined than random forest classifier (RFC); the correlation between random two-band spectral indices and nitrogen concentration was stronger than that of other spectral parameters; and the BPNN model based on the combination of random two-band spectral indices and red-edge parameters was the optimal model for accurately retrieving CNC. Its modeling determination coefficient (R²) and root mean square error (RMSE) were 0.77 and 0.16, respectively; and the validation R² and residual predictive deviation (RPD) were 0.75 and 1.92. The findings of this study can provide a theoretical basis and technical support for the large-scale, rapid, and non-destructive monitoring of apple nutritional status.

Soil analysis using near-infrared spectroscopy has shown great potential to be an alternative to traditional laboratory analysis, and there is continuously increasing interest in building large-scale soil spectral libraries (SSLs). However, due to issues such as high non-linearity in soil spectral data and complexity in soil spatial variation, the establishment of robust prediction models for soil spectral libraries remains a challenge. This study aimed to investigate the performance of deep learning algorithms, including long short-term memory (LSTM) and LSTM–convolutional neural networks (LSTM–CNN) integrated models, to predict the soil organic matter (SOM) of a provincial-scale SSL, and compare it to the normally used local weighted regression (LWR) model. The Hebei soil spectral library (HSSL) contains 425 topsoil samples (0–20 cm), of which every 3 soil samples were collected from dry land, irrigated land, and paddy fields, respectively, in different counties of Hebei Province, China. The results show that the accuracy of the validation dataset rank as follows: LSTM–CNN (R²_p = 0.96, RMSE_p = 1.66 g/kg) > LSTM (R²_p = 0.83, RMSE_p = 3.42 g/kg) > LWR (R²_p = 0.82, RMSE_p = 3.79 g/kg). The LSTM–CNN model performed the best, mainly due to its comprehensive ability to effectively extract spatial and temporal features. Meanwhile, the LSTM model achieved higher accuracy than the LWR model, owing to its built-in memory unit and its advantage of faster feature band extraction. Thus, it was suggested to use deep learning algorithms for SOM predictions in SSLs. However, their performance on larger-scale SSLs such as continental/global SSLs still needs to be further investigated.