Spectroscopic detection of cotton Verticillium wilt by spectral feature selection and machine learning methods.

Abstract

Introduction Verticillium wilt is a severe soil-borne disease that affects cotton growth and yield. Traditional monitoring methods, which rely on manual investigation, are inefficient and impractical for large-scale applications. This study introduces a novel approach combining machine learning with feature selection to identify sensitive spectral features for accurate and efficient detection of cotton Verticillium wilt. Methods We conducted comprehensive hyperspectral measurements using handheld devices (350-2500 nm) to analyze cotton leaves in a controlled greenhouse environment and employed Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) hyperspectral imaging (400-995 nm) to capture canopy-level data in field conditions. The hyperspectral data were pre-processed to extract wavelet coefficients and spectral indices (SIs), enabling the derivation of disease-specific spectral features (DSSFs) through advanced feature selection techniques. Using these DSSFs, we developed detection models to assess both the incidence and severity of leaf damage by Verticillium wilt at the leaf scale and the incidence at the canopy scale. Initial analysis identified critical spectral reflectance bands, wavelet coefficients, and SIs that exhibited dynamic responses as the disease progressed. Results Model validation demonstrated that the incidence detection models at the leaf scale achieved a peak classification accuracy of 85.83%, which is about 10% higher than traditional methods without feature selection. The severity detection models showed improved precision as disease severity of damage increased, with accuracy ranging from 46.82% to 93.10%. At the canopy scale, UAV-based hyperspectral data achieved a remarkable classification accuracy of 93.0% for disease incidence detection. Discussion This study highlights the significant impact of feature selection on enhancing the performance of hyperspectral-based remote sensing models for cotton wilt monitoring. It also explores the transferability of sensitive spectral features across different scales, laying the groundwork for future large-scale early warning systems and monitoring cotton Verticillium wilt.

Plant phenotyping relevance

綿花の病害状態をハイパースペクトル計測と特徴選択・機械学習で葉および群落レベルに推定し、モデル性能も検証しているため、病害フェノタイピング手法が中心です。

Code and data availability

The paper's hyperspectral leaf/canopy measurements and analysis code are not publicly deposited. The data availability statement only promises raw data from the authors on request. All cited code URLs (PROSPECT R package, scipy, pywt, scikit-learn, mlxtend) are generic third-party libraries, not authors' paper-specific

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