The Application of Unmanned Aerial Systems for Monitoring Cotton Growth and Development.

The Application of Unmanned Aerial Systems for Monitoring Cotton Growth and Development

Authors: M. Mikeska¹, N. Rajan¹, D. Cope², S. Shafian¹

¹Texas A&M University: Department of Soil and Crop Science

²Texas A&M University: Department of Mechanical Engineering

Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) is a warm season fiber crop that is grown in regions that tend to experience extremely high temperatures during the growing season. Plants are exposed to high temperatures that cause stress resulting in loss of yield and quality. Often in these regions water is the limiting factor that most significantly affects yield. A study testing the effects of irrigation on cotton was conducted at the Texas A&M AgriLife Brazos Bottom Research Farm located in Burleson County, Texas. The study has a split plot design with irrigation as the main plot (90% ET replacement, 45% ET replacement and dryland), and cultivars (PHY 333, PHY 499, FM 1900, FM 2484, ST 4946, NG 1511, DP 1549, DP 15R551) as the subplot treatments. High resolution imagery was collected weekly using two different unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) (TuffWing UAV Mapper and DJI Matrice 100). The platforms were equipped with three different sensors (MicaSense RedEdge multi-spectral camera, DJI Zenmuse Z3 RGB camera and ICI 8640-P thermal camera). Imagery was used to observe the performance of the cultivars under each treatment. The relationship between normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and leaf area index (LAI) were explored as aerial NDVI was compared to ground sampled LAI measurements. High resolution RGB imagery was also used to estimate yields using an image classification method.