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PREDICTING BIOMASS AND YIELD AT HARVEST OF SALT-STRESSED TOMATO PLANTS USING UAV IMAGERY

Research Authors
Kasper Johansen1*, Mitchell J. L. Morton2, Yoann M. Malbeteau1, Bruno Aragon1, Samir K. Al-Mashharawi1, Matteo G. Ziliani1, Yoseline Angel1, Gabriele M. Fiene2, Sónia S. C. Negrão2,3, Magdi A. A. Mousa4,5, Mark A. Tester2 and Matthew F. McCabe1
Research Abstract

Biomass and yield are important variables used for assessing agricultural production. However, these variables are difficult to
estimate for individual plants at the farm scale and may be affected by abiotic stressors such as salinity. In this study, the wild tomato
species, Solanum pimpinellifolium, was evaluated through field and UAV-based assessment of 600 control and 600 salt-treated
plants. The aim of this research was to determine, if UAV-based imagery, collected one, two, four, six, seven and eight weeks before
harvest could predict fresh shoot mass, tomato fruit numbers, and yield mass at harvest and if predictions varied for control and salttreated plants. A Random Forest approach was used to model biomass and yield. The results showed that shape features such as plant
area, border length, width and length had the highest importance in the random forest models. A week prior to harvest, the explained
variance of fresh shoot mass, number of fruits and yield mass were 86.60%, 59.46% and 61.09%, respectively. The explained
variance was reduced as a function of time to harvest. Separate models may be required for predicting yield of salt-stressed plants,
whereas the prediction of yield for control plants was less affected if the model included salt-stressed plants. This research
demonstrates that it is possible to predict biomass and yield of tomato plants up to four weeks prior to harvest, and potentially earlier
in the absence of severe weather events.

Research Department
Research Journal
The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences
Research Member
Research Publisher
ISPRS Geospatia
Research Rank
3
Research Vol
XLII-2/W13
Research Website
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLII-2-W13-407-2019
Research Year
2019
Research Pages
407-411