Abstract
Corn yield is dependent on factors such as plant density, presence of
water and nutrients, temperature, and type of crop variety. The lagging
effect of these factors can either impede or improve upon crop yield at
harvest. Prediction of corn yield from technological-aided approach
assists farmers to make decision on adopting measures that could improve
yield to feed the increasing human population, livestock that rely
solely on corn and for scientific purposes. However, reduction in crop
yield is attributed to small, moderate, or severe lodging of plant
roots, stems which shortens plant height and impact corn yield. Lodging
results in the plant leaning towards the earth due to the occurrence of
strong wind and rainstorms. Identification of lodged plants from crop
imagery and data-driven analysis provide cost-effective time sensitive
information to the stakeholder to decide the best cultivation recovery
mechanism such as increasing corn seed per hole before the end of the
corn season. The study area was divided into three blocks with different
treatments. There was no prescribed burning in the first two blocks
while the control plot was burned following a prescribed plan. A UAV
with the mounted RGB and NIR sensors was flown over the study area; (1)
the first block was not burned, and fertilizer was applied, (2) the
second block was not burned and no fertilization, (3) the control block
was burned, and fertilization applied from planting to harvesting
biweekly to capture the field remotely. The remote sensing images were
processed and the digital elevation model (DEM) and orthoimages of the
area were created. Plant height was determined from DEM and Normalized
Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) was estimated using the orthoimages
for crop growth and yield analysis. U-Net architecture was used in this
study for lodged and non-lodged plants image segmentation considering
the changes of crop heights and NDVI extracted from the multi-temporal
UAV captured from the time of planting (April) to harvesting (August).
Keywords: Lodging, UAV, Deep learning, Sensor, Orthoimage, Precision
agriculture, Vegetation indices This material is based on work supported
by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1832110.