RGB‐based indices for estimating cover crop biomass, nitrogen content, and carbon:nitrogen ratio

Abstract

Plant cover and biochemical composition are essential parameters for evaluating cover crop management. Destructive sampling or estimates with aerial imagery require substantial labor, time, expertise, or instrumentation cost. Using low-cost consumer and mobile phone cameras to estimate plant canopy coverage and biochemical composition could broaden the use of high-throughput technologies in research and crop management. Here, we estimated canopy development, tissue nitrogen, and biomass of medium red clover (Trifolium pratense L.), a perennial forage legume and common cover crop, using red-green-blue (RGB) indices collected with standard settings in non-standardized field conditions. Pixels were classified as plant or background using combinations of four RGB indices with both unsupervised machine learning and preset thresholds. The excess green minus red (ExGR) index with a preset threshold of zero was the best index and threshold combination. It correctly identified pixels as plant or background 86.25% of the time. This combination also provided accurate estimates of crop growth and quality: Canopy coverage correlated with red clover biomass (R² = 0.554, root mean square error [RMSE] = 219.29 kg ha⁻¹), and ExGR index values of vegetation pixels were highly correlated with clover nitrogen content (R² = 0.573, RMSE = 3.5 g kg⁻¹) and carbon:nitrogen ratio (R² = 0.574, RMSE = 1.29 g g⁻¹). Data collection were simple to implement and stable across imaging conditions. Pending testing across different sensors, sites, and crop species, this method contributes to a growing and open set of decision support tools for agricultural research and management.

Plant phenotyping relevance

低コストRGB画像と画素分類を用いて、植物被覆、バイオマス、窒素含量、C:N比を推定する手法を開発・評価しており、表現型取得が研究の中心です。

Code and data availability

The paper's authors state that all referenced analysis scripts for the RGB vegetation index processing, thresholding, and canopy cover estimation are publicly available on GitHub. The phenotype/trait data (images, biomass, N, C:N measurements) are deposited at a U of M repository (hdl.handle.net/11299/263900), but that