Drone-Based Crop Health Analysis and Precision Agriculture System

Abstract

Agriculture remains the backbone of global food security, yet crop diseases, nutrient deficiencies, water stress, and pest infestations cause annual yield losses estimated at 20–40% worldwide. Conventional field scouting methods are labour-intensive, time-consuming, and fail to capture the spatial heterogeneity of large farms. This paper presents a Drone-Based Crop Health Analysis and Precision Agriculture System (DBCHAPS) that integrates multi-spectral and RGB imaging drones, deep learning-based crop disease detection, vegetation index analysis, variable-rate prescription mapping, and autonomous precision spraying. A DJI Matrice 300 RTK drone equipped with a MicaSense RedEdge-MX multi-spectral camera captures high-resolution aerial imagery across five spectral bands (Blue, Green, Red, Red-Edge, Near Infrared). The captured data is processed through a custom-trained YOLOv8-based convolutional neural network (CNN) pipeline to detect 18 distinct crop diseases and stress conditions across rice, wheat, and cotton crops. Concurrently, vegetation indices (NDVI, NDRE, GNDVI, SAVI) are computed to generate prescription maps for site-specific fertilizer and pesticide application. Experimental evaluation on a 120 acre farm in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu over two crop seasons demonstrates a disease detection accuracy of 96.3%, early stress detection 8–12 days before visible symptoms, and a 31% reduction in agrochemical usage through variable-rate application. The system achieves an end-to-end field analysis time of under 45 minutes for 100 acres. Keywords — UAV, Precision Agriculture, Crop Disease Detection, Multi-Spectral Imaging, NDVI, YOLOv8, Deep Learning, Variable-Rate Application, Remote Sensing, Smart Farming.

Plant phenotyping relevance

ドローンのマルチスペクトル/RGB画像とYOLOv8を用いて作物の病害・ストレス状態を推定するシステムを開発し、精度と運用性能を評価しており、植物フェノタイピング手法が中心である。

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