Rice yield estimation using multispectral data from UAV: A preliminary experiment in northern Italy

UAVs platforms are promising for agricultural monitoring since they offer operating flexibility, very high spatial resolution and acquisition costs suitable for frequent on demand monitoring of crop field. In this work we carried out an experimental flight over a rice field in Lombardy region, northern Italy, to test the correlation between reflectance in the spectral channels and vegetation indices derived from imagery acquired with a multi-spectral sensor on board an UAV. Results show that UAV images can be used to map the within-field spatial variability and crop yield (R²~0.42-0.54 between NIR reflectance and/or spectral VIs and rice grain yield) and can successfully complement more traditional technologies for precision farming applications.