The relationship of hyper-spectral vegetation indices with leaf area index (LAI) over the growth cycle of wheat and chickpea at 3 nm spectral resolution Original Research Article

Hyperspectral ratio and normalized difference vegetation indices were computed from the 3 nm bandwidth ground-based spectral data taken in 400–950 nm wave length region over the crop growth cycle (CGC) of wheat and chickpea. Synthesized broad band Landsat TM-RVI, TM-NDVI and TM-SAVI were also computed using this narrow bandwidth spectral observations. Regression analysis was carried out for these indices with leaf area index (LAI) for wheat and chickpea over CGC and the r2 values were found poor in 0.2–0.53 range for wheat and in 0.41–0.82 range for chickpea. Significant relationship with LAI were found for wheat (r2 in 0.86–0.97 range) when growth and decline phases were analyzed independently. Here, r2 values for chickpea were less than that for wheat. The high difference in rate of change of slope for hRVI is a good discriminator for high ET (wheat) and low ET (chickpea) crops. To find out the potential hyperspectral ratios and normalized difference indices that could provide strong relationship with LAI, a correlation-based analysis was carried out for LAI with all the possible combinations of ratios and normalized difference indices in 400–950 nm region (at 3 nm spectral interval) independently for growth and decline phases of LAI and found that in addition to traditional near-IR and red pairs, the pairs within near-IR, near-IR and visible extending to near-IR were also significantly related to LAI.