Application of remote sensing technique for rice precision farming

Teoh Chin Chuang (DR)Chan Chee Wan (DR)Abu Hassan Daud

Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI)

Main paddy producing granary areas:

1. Muda Agricultural Development Authority (MADA);

2. Kemubu Agricultural Development Authority (KADA);

3. Kerian-Sungai Manik Integrated Agriculture Development Area;

4. Barat Laut Selangor Integrated Agriculture Development Area;

5. Seberang Perak Integrated Agriculture Development Area;

6. Penang Integrated Agriculture Development Area;

7. North Terengganu Integrated Agriculture Development (KETARA)

8. Integrated Agriculture Development Kemasin Semerak

Source: Food and Agriculture Organization (FOA)

Rice is an important crop in Malaysia covering about 600,000 ha with an average yield of 3.0 to 5.2 t/ha

Background:

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500000

1000000

1500000

2000000

2500000

3000000

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Year

Tonn

es

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Paddy Production:

Self-sufficiency level (SSL) ≈ 70%

Problems: small fragmented land holding competing water resource use scarcity of farm labor indiscriminate chemical input use environmental stresses

Precision farming A technology to manage variability for improving

agriculture production and environmental quality- land levelling- water - soil nutrient- plant health- pest and disease- yield

Precision farming technologies developments were carried out byMalaysian Agricultural Research & Development Institute (MARDI):

1. Water and farm infrastructure management2. Techniques in precision agriculture related crop establishment

management3. Soil nutrient management4. Instrumentation and sensors system for data collection and

variable rate application5. Remote sensing methodology using aerial sensing techniques

for rice fields correlation studies of remote sensing data6. Decision support system for supporting precision agriculture

operations in mechanized rice production 7. Variable rate application for weeds, pest and disease control8. Variable rate nutrient application9. Rice yield monitor for Malaysian rice combine harvester

Irrigation information system

Plowing Land leveling

Veris electrical conductivity (EC) sensor for soil nutrients assessment

Remote sensing system

Variable rate application (VRA) system

Seed sowing

Decision support system (DSS)

Rice yield monitor

Application of remote sensing techniques:

1. Paddy field plot boundaries extraction2. Water front pattern monitoring3. Rice plant growth monitoring4. Fertilizer treatment maps

Satellite Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)

QuadcopterCropCamIKONOS

• Geographical Information System (GIS) is a tool  tovisualise, analyse and manage the variability in the rice field

Vector layers

1. Paddy field plot boundaries extraction

• Timely and accurate digital vector basemap is needed

Land surveying Manual digitizing

Digital vector basemap - Land surveying - Manual digitizing

Slow, tedious and costly !!

Image processing techniques & customised GIS processing methods ‐QMAP

Satellite Image

Image Processing Technique

GIS Processing & Editing

Digital vector basemap

Vector

Raster

Satellite Image

False Colour Composite (Red, Green and Near IR bands )

IKONOSCommercial earth observation satellite:- 1st to collect publicly available

high-resolution imagery at 1-and 4-meter resolution

Band 1-mpanchromatic

4-m multispectral & 1-m pan-sharpened

1 (Blue) 0.45–0.90 µm 0.445–0.516 µm

2 (Green) * 0.506–0.595 µm

3 (Red) * 0.632–0.698 µm

4 (Near IR) * 0.757–0.853 µm

Image processing

IKONOS image

Linear feature extraction

Image classification

Raster to vector conversion

GIS processing & editing of vector map

GIS processing & editing of vector map

GIS

QMap

4000 ha

FELCRA Seberang Perak

2. Water front pattern monitoring

Image transformation

Image classification

WaterSoil

30 min 60 min 90 min

120 min 150 min 180 min

Water (21%) Water (51%) Water (71%)

Water (85%) Water (94%) Water (98%)

3. Rice plant growth monitoring

R,G and NIR images acquisition

Image classification

Image mosaicing

Wing Span: 2.5 m Length: 1.2 mWeight: 2.7 kgMaterial: Carbon fiber reinforced fiber glassCruise Speed: 60 Km/HrFlight Duration: Up to 50 minutes (depending on wind conditions)Maximum Wind Speed: 30 Km/HrMaximum load: 0.5 kg

CropCam UAV system

Image acquisition

TETRACAM camera

Image mosaicing

R, G and NIR sample images

3. Rice plant growth monitoring30/4/2012 23/5/2012 1/6/2012 21/6/2012 12/7/2012

Water (100%) Water (84%)

Paddy (16 %)Water (73%)

Paddy (27 %)Water (12%)

Paddy (88 %)

Water (7%)

Paddy (93 %)

4. Fertilizer treatment maps

Blanket or package fertilizer recommendations over large areas is not efficient because indigenous nutrient supply varies widely among rice fields in Asia (Dobermann and White 1999; Olk et al. 1999).

Over applied fertilizer will caused the crop failure because of lodging or pest attack (Fairhurst and Witt 2002)

• Variable-rate N management is a solution for minimizing fertilizer input and maximizing yield

• Green Area Index (GAI) model was developed by Abu et. al (2005) for determining the additional N fertilizer to be applied

1. SPAD reading2. Plant population (i.e. tiller number)

An optical sensing of crop canopy spectral reflectance technique was developed to estimate SPAD reading and plant population

RGB image acquisition

RGB spectral reflectance extraction

Statistical analysis

SPAD value map

Image mosaicing

Plant population map

RGB image acquisition

Flying height: 320 mImage type: RGBImage resolution: 6.25 cm/pixel

Yan, Kedah

Sample images

Image mosaicing

RGB spectral reflectance extraction

Average mean RGB values of 4x4 pixels were calculated

Statistical Analysis Relationship between SPAD readings and RGB

spectral reflectance values Relationship between plant population and RGB

spectral reflectance values

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Predicted SPAD reading = m* [spectral reflectance values] + c

High SPAD reading

Non-plant area

Medium SPAD reading

Low SPAD reading

Predicted plant population = m* [spectral reflectance values] + c

High population

Non-plant area

Medium population

Low population

SPAD reading Map Population Map

Fertilizer Treatment Map

HM

L

Variable rate fertilizer applicator

+

High fertilizer rate

Medium fertilizer rate

Low fertilizer rate

THANK YOU