Ultrasonic and LIDAR Sensors for Electronic Canopy Characterization in Vineyards: Advances to Improve Pesticide Application Methods

Abstract

Canopy characterization is a key factor to improve pesticide application methods in tree crops and vineyards. Development of quick, easy and efficient methods to determine the fundamental parameters used to characterize canopy structure is thus an important need. In this research the use of ultrasonic and LIDAR sensors have been compared with the traditional manual and destructive canopy measurement procedure. For both methods the values of key parameters such as crop height, crop width, crop volume or leaf area have been compared. Obtained results indicate that an ultrasonic sensor is an appropriate tool to determine the average canopy characteristics, while a LIDAR sensor provides more accuracy and detailed information about the canopy. Good correlations have been obtained between crop volume (CVU) values measured with ultrasonic sensors and leaf area index, LAI (R2 = 0.51). A good correlation has also been obtained between the canopy volume measured with ultrasonic and LIDAR sensors (R2 = 0.52). Laser measurements of crop height (CHL) allow one to accurately predict the canopy volume. The proposed new technologies seems very appropriate as complementary tools to improve the efficiency of pesticide applications, although further improvements are still needed.

Visualizing and Quantifying Vineyard Canopy LAI Using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Collected High Density Structure from Motion Point Cloud

“…Terrestrial lidar has been successfully implemented to explore biophysical properties of vines [9][10][11][12][13]. Keightley et al [10] measured uprooted grapevine trunk biomass with a stationary terrestrial lidar scanner.…”

In-Field High-Throughput Phenotyping of Cotton Plant Height Using LiDAR

“…Therefore, it has been increasingly used in field phenotyping [26]. Llorens et al [30] compared the use of ultrasonic sensors and LiDAR to capture canopy characterization in vineyards, and they concluded that data obtained with LiDAR is generally more precise than data obtained with ultrasonic sensors. Rosell Polo et al [31] designed a tractor-mounted LiDAR to scan several kinds of tree and plantations from the side view.…”

Effect of the spray volume adjustment model on the efficiency of fungicides and residues in processing tomato

“…However, this study cannot confirm directly this thesis. Studies on other crops (Walklate et al, 2003;Dammer et al, 2008;Llorens et al, 2011), including potato (Cooke et al, 2011) indicate that crop and canopy characteristics modify the fungicide rate per leaf surface area unit and could affect fungicide efficiency.…”

“…Due to physical and mechanical process it can cause disappearance, dispersing and redistributing of active ingredients by volume and intensity of rainfall (Bruhn & Fry, 1982b;Töfoli et al, 2014). Töfoli et al (2014) showed that systemic, including azoxystrobin, or inherent tenacity fungicides were less affected by the simulated rainfall than contact fungicides against P. infestans and Alternaria solani on potato leaf. Chlorothalonil gave a very similar result to azoxystrobin when rain was simulated 0.5, 1 and 2 hours after application against A. solani.…”