Detection of Ecballium elaterium in hedgerow olive orchards using a low‐cost uncrewed aerial vehicle and open‐source algorithms

Abstract

BACKGROUND Ecballium elaterium (common name: squirting cucumber) is an emerging weed problem in hedgerow or superintensive olive groves under no tillage. It colonizes the inter‐row area infesting the natural or sown cover crops, and is considered a hard‐to‐control weed. Research in other woody crops has shown E. elaterium has a patchy distribution, which makes this weed susceptible to design a site‐specific control strategy only addressed to E. elaterium patches. Therefore, the aim of this work was to develop a methodology based on the analysis of imagery acquired with an uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) to detect and map E. elaterium infestations in hedgerow olive orchards. RESULTS The study was conducted in two superintensive olive orchards, and the images were taken using a UAV equipped with an RGB sensor. Flights were conducted on two dates: in May, when there were various weeds infesting the orchard, and in September, when E. elaterium was the only infesting weed. UAV‐orthomosaics in the first scenario were classified using random forest models, and the orthomosaics from September with E. elaterium as the only weed, were analyzed using an unsupervised algorithm. In both cases, the overall accuracies were over 0.85, and the producer's accuracies for E. elaterium ranged between 0.74 and 1.00. CONCLUSION These results allow the design of a site‐specific and efficient herbicide control protocol which would represent a step forward in sustainable weed management. The development of these algorithms in free and open‐source software fosters their application in small and medium farms. © 2022 The Authors. Pest Management Science published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.

Exploring the Potential of Remote Sensing to Facilitate Integrated Weed Management in Smallholder Farms: A Scoping Review

“…Recently, ML algorithms implemented within cloud computing environments are being implemented more frequently as they offer many advantages over traditional methods, particularly for processing and analyzing large complex datasets [27]. Furthermore, with cloud-based platforms such as Google Earth Engine (GEE) being freely available and easily accessible, many of the barriers that have restricted users (particularly those in developing countries) from exploiting technological advancements to guide agricultural operations have now been removed [40]. While the availability and accessibility of such a powerful data processing platform have opened up many new and exciting avenues to a wide range of users interested in utilizing remote sensing to guide and inform PA applications, users will require good internet connectivity.…”

“…Hence, it is important to keep the site weed-free. Furthermore, performing early discrimination of the types of weeds growing in the crop field provides the added advantage of selecting the correct type of herbicide treatment to be applied, thus avoiding using a wide-spectrum herbicide [40]. For smallholder farmers, this could result in reduced costs, and given that manual weed removal is often practiced, it presents the best time to manage weeds, as they are easier to control [51].…”

“…Subsequently, the strengths and limitations of each of these approaches will need to be considered before deciding which method to adopt. However, pixel-and object-based approaches have been shown to perform well for crop and weed mapping [38][39][40].…”

Innovations towards sustainable olive crop management: a new dawn by precision agriculture including endo-therapy

“…Similarly, application studies for aerial spraying on pine trees are also highlighting the requirement of nozzle selection for an optimal droplet deposition on trees ( Yao et al., 2022 ). While precise deposition of active ingredients using UAVs in olive orchards may become relevant only in the midterm, UAVs/drones are routinely used for multispectral imaging of olive trees which can for instance aid precise detection of the weed Ecballium elaterium ( Torres-Sánchez et al., 2023 ). In terms of precision farming in horticulture, a trend is also the use of robotics for tree management including precise monitoring of trunks.…”

Advancements in Remote Sensing Imagery Applications for Precision Management in Olive Growing: A Systematic Review

“…Providing non-destructive methodologies with high spatial, radiometric and temporal resolutions, RS allows the characterization and monitoring of spatiotemporal variability for multidimensional purposes [9][10][11][12][13]. Over the past few decades, RS technology has played a crucial role in the development of new agricultural applications, focusing primarily on monitoring vegetation cover [14][15][16], assessing crop vigor conditions [17][18][19], estimating nutrient and water status [20][21][22], determining crop evapotranspiration (ET c ) [23][24][25], identifying and managing invasive plants [26][27][28], detecting and monitoring pest/diseases [29][30][31] and forecasting crop yields [32][33][34]. The effectiveness of RS applications in agriculture depends on several fundamental factors, including the choice of sensing platform, which can be a satellite, aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or terrestrial platform; the segment of the electromagnetic spectrum used; the number and range of spectral bands; spatial, temporal and radiometric resolutions; and the energy source (passive or active sensors) [9].…”