Objective biomass assessment using an active plant sensor (Crop Circle™) - preliminary experiences on a variety of agricultural landscapes

Title
Objective biomass assessment using an active plant sensor (Crop Circle™) - preliminary experiences on a variety of agricultural landscapes
Publication Date
2008
Author(s)
Trotter, Tieneke
Frazier, Paul
Trotter, Mark
Lamb, David
Type of document
Conference Publication
Language
en
Entity Type
Publication
Publisher
International Society of Precision Agriculture (ISPA)
Place of publication
Monticello, United States of America
UNE publication id
une:10345
Abstract
Quantifying spatial variation in pasture and crop biomass can help to direct management practices and improve farm productivity, through accurate and informed movements of grazing rotations, crop and pasture nutrient management and yield production. Visual pasture assessments are often subjective, and require a degree of expert knowledge/experience. Quadrat-based plant harvesting determinations of biomass is labour intensive and costly when accurate quantification of pasture and crop variability over large areas is required. Furthermore, quadrats of 1m² or less are not easy to relate to remotely sensed images with spatial resolutions ranging from 4 to 400m². Active optical plant sensors that measure the red and near-infrared radiation reflected from the vegetation canopy offer the potential of deriving objective estimates of the photosynthetically-active plant biomass and may also hold the key to quantifying biomass over large areas with high spatial resolution. Crop Circle™ (Holland Scientific) is one example of an active plant sensor that measures red and near infrared light reflected from the canopy/soil matrix. In this paper we present the results of a project to assess the accuracy of Crop Circle™ for biomass assessment in a variety of agricultural environments including: native, improved and irrigated pasture; and forage and cereal crops.
Link
Citation
9th ICPA Proceedings CD

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