Multi-Temporal Estimation of Maize Yield and Flowering Time Using
UAV-Based Hyperspectral Data
Abstract
Maize (Zea mays L.) is one of the most consumed grains in the world and
improving maize yield is of great importance for food security,
especially under global climate change and more frequent severe
droughts. However, traditional phenotyping methods relying on manual
assessment are time-consuming and prone to human errors. Recently, the
application of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has gained increasing
attention in plant phenotyping due to their efficiency in data
collection. Moreover, hyperspectral sensors integrated with UAVs can
offer data streams with high spectral and spatial resolutions, which are
essential for estimating plants’ physiological and biochemical traits.
In this study, we developed machine learning models to estimate grain
yield and flowering time of maize breeding lines using multi-temporal
UAV-based hyperspectral imagery. The performance of multiple machine
learning models and the efficacy of different hyperspectral features
were evaluated on Genomes to Fields (G2F) experimental sites in
Wisconsin. Results showed that ridge regression is the most robust model
in estimating grain yield and flowering time, compared to random forest
and support vector regression models. Furthermore, the ridge regression
model achieved a correlation coefficient (r) of 0.551 for yield, 0.906
for days to silking, and 0.914 for days to anthesis when using the
full-bands spectra features for estimation. In addition, we assessed the
modeling performance using data acquired from different growing stages.
The best time of applying the UAV survey was also identified in order to
reduce the data collection efforts.