Evaluating two crop circle active canopy sensors for in-season diagnosis of winter wheat nitrogen status

Qiang Cao, Yuxin Miao, Jianning Shen, Fei Yuan, Shanshan Cheng, Zhenling Cui

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

33 Scopus citations

Abstract

Active crop canopy sensors can be used for non-destructive real-time diagnosis of crop nitrogen (N) status and guiding in-season N management. However, limited studies have compared the performances of two commercially available sensors with three different wavebands: Crop Circle ACS-470 (CC-470) and Crop Circle ACS-430 (CC-430). The objective of this study was to evaluate the performances of CC-470 and CC-430 sensors for estimating winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) N status at different measurement heights (40 cm, 70 cm and 100 cm) and growth stages. Results indicated that the canopy reflectance values of CC-470 were more affected by height compared to the CC-430 sensor. The normalized difference red edge (NDRE) and red edge chlorophyll index (CIRE) of CC-430 were stable at the three different measuring heights. The relationships between these indices and the N status indicators were stronger at the Feekes 9–10 stages than the Feekes 6–7 stages for both sensors; however, the CC-430 sensor-based vegetation indices had higher coefficient of determination (R2) values for both stages. It is concluded that the CC-430 sensor is more reliable than CC-470 for winter wheat N status estimation due to its capability of making height-independent measurements. These results demonstrated the importance of considering the influences of height when using active canopy sensors in field measurements.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number201
JournalAgronomy
Volume8
Issue number10
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 21 2018

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Funding: This research was financially supported by the National Basic Research Program (2015CB150405), National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFD0200600, 2016YFD0200602), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31601222), and the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20150663).

Funding Information:
This research was financially supported by the National Basic Research Program (2015CB150405), National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFD0200600, 2016YFD0200602), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31601222), and the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20150663).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 by the authors.

Keywords

  • Active canopy sensor
  • In-season nitrogen management
  • Measurement height
  • Nitrogen nutrition index
  • Plant nitrogen concentration
  • Precision nitrogen management

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