Cost-effective and time saving method of phenological monitoring using satellite imagery in drip-irrigated rice.

Abstract

Phenological monitoring is a necessary part of crop production. Fertilization, plant care measures, irrigation scheduling and plant protection are closely related in their efficiency to timely and precise determination of certain phenological phases of the cultivated plants to ensure the best out pay of the technological operations. Phenological observations are usually time-consuming and require some extra expenditures due to the need to visit each field of a farm or agricultural holding and cross it several times to assess the growth and development of the cultivated plants on the large scale. Modern technologies, mainly remote sensing, provide an opportunity to estimate crops development both on the scale of a local field or whole farm in time-saving and cost-effective manner through vegetation indices. The purpose of this study was to determine the correspondence between the values of the normalized difference vegetation index and phenological phases of drip irrigation rice, cultivated in the south of Ukraine during 2016-2017, to ensure the possibility of remote phenological monitoring in such crops. As a result, the highest values of the vegetation index were determined to be recorded in the tillering-heading period, and usually coincides with the period of July. The determined rice vegetation patterns are not only for rice growers due to time and cost savings for crop phenological monitoring, but are also of great importance for intelligent agriculture in the sense of crop recognition automation and mapping.