Remote Sensing Monitoring of Durum Wheat under No Tillage Practices by Means of Spectral Indices Interpretation: A Preliminary Study

Federico Calcagno, Elio Romano (), Nicola Furnitto, Arman Jamali and Sabina Failla
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Federico Calcagno: Department of Agriculture, Food and Environment (Di3A), University of Catania, 95123 Catania, Italy
Elio Romano: CREA-Consiglio per la Ricerca in Agricoltura e l’Analisi dell’Economia Agraria, Centro Ingegneria e Trasformazioni Agroalimentari, 24047 Treviglio, Italy
Nicola Furnitto: Department of Agriculture, Food and Environment (Di3A), University of Catania, 95123 Catania, Italy
Arman Jamali: Department of Agronomy and Plant Breeding, University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj 66177-15175, Iran
Sabina Failla: Department of Agriculture, Food and Environment (Di3A), University of Catania, 95123 Catania, Italy

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 22, 1-18

Abstract: Due to its advantages, remote sensing monitoring has been used in various applications and made noteworthy contributions to understanding soil and plant processes, as well as in the agriculture sector. The aim of the work is to compare the return of durum wheat crops in conservative agricultural practices in Mediterranean climate conditions by analysing the data from the Sentinel2 satellite through three spectral indices. The analysed spectral indices have different interpretations and therefore have been studied in different periods: (i) NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index) for the evaluation of the vegetative vigour from January to June; (ii) NDWI (normalized difference water index) for the moisture of covered soil from January to June and of bare soil after harvesting from June to August; and (iii) NMDI (normalized multi-band drought index) for the variability of bare soil moisture from June to August. With reference to the machines used in cultivation practices, a further purpose of the study is to investigate the effects of automatic guidance versus manual guidance on production yields and on the spectral indices considered. The first results show that the NDVI follows crop phenological stages by reaching the maximum values in correspondence with the stem elongation and booting stages. Additionally, the NDWI showed the same trend as the NDVI during the current crop. After harvesting, the NDWI showed higher values in the plots cultivated under conservation tillage practices. In the same period, the NMDI showed the same results as the NDWI and a positive correlation, confirming that tillage practices could imply a lower ability to retain water in drought time.

Keywords: no tillage; NDVI; NDWI; NMDI; satellite images; water use; conservation tillage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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