Sustainable Agriculture by Increasing Nitrogen Fertilizer Efficiency Using Low-Resolution Camera Mounted on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Dong-Wook Kim, Tae-Sun Min, Yoonha Kim, Renato Rodrigues Silva, Hae-Nam Hyun, Ju-Sung Kim, Kyung-Hwan Kim, Hak-Jin Kim and Yong Suk Chung
Additional contact information
Dong-Wook Kim: Department of Biosystems & Biomaterials Science and Engineering, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul 08826, Korea
Tae-Sun Min: Department of Animal Biotechnology, Jeju National University, Jeju 63243, Korea
Yoonha Kim: Plant Bioscience, School of Applied Biosciences, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 41566, Korea
Renato Rodrigues Silva: Institute of Mathematics and Statistics, Federal University of Goias, Goiania 74001-970, Brazil
Hae-Nam Hyun: Department of Plant Resources and Environment, Jeju National University, Jeju 63243, Korea
Ju-Sung Kim: Department of Plant Resources and Environment, Jeju National University, Jeju 63243, Korea
Kyung-Hwan Kim: National Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Rural Development Administration (RDA), Jeonju 54874, Korea
Hak-Jin Kim: Department of Biosystems & Biomaterials Science and Engineering, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul 08826, Korea
Yong Suk Chung: Department of Plant Resources and Environment, Jeju National University, Jeju 63243, Korea

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 20, 1-10

Abstract: Nitrogen use efficiency in modern agriculture is very low. It means that a lot of synthetic chemicals are wasted rather than utilized by crops. This can cause more problems where the soil surface is thin and rocky like Jeju Island in the Republic of Korea. This is because overly used nitrogen fertilizer can be washed into the underground water and pollute it. Thus, it would be important to monitor the nitrogen deficiency of crops in the field to provide the right amount of nitrogen in a timely manner so that nitrogen waste can be limited. To achieve this, the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) was used to monitor chlorophyll content, which is tightly associated with nitrogen content in the buckwheat field. The NDVI was calculated with the data obtained by a low-resolution camera mounted on an unmanned aerial vehicle. The results showed that the NDVI can estimate the chlorophyll content of buckwheat. These simple but clear results imply that precision agriculture could be achieved even with a low-resolution camera in a cost-effective manner to reduce the pollution of underground water.

Keywords: nitrogen fertilizer; chlorophyll contents; near infrared; normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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