Potato Leaf Area Index Estimation Using Multi-Sensor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Imagery and Machine Learning

Tong Yu, Jing Zhou, Jiahao Fan, Yi Wang, Zhou Zhang

Potato holds significant importance as a staple food crop worldwide, particularly in addressing the needs of a growing population. Accurate estimation of the potato Leaf Area Index (LAI) plays a crucial role in predicting crop yield and facilitating precise management practices. Leveraging the capabilities of UAV platforms, we harnessed their efficiency in capturing multi-source, high-resolution remote sensing data. Our study focused on estimating potato LAI utilizing UAV-based digital red–green–blue (RGB) images, Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) points, and hyperspectral images (HSI). From these data sources, we computed four sets of indices and employed them as inputs for four different machine-learning regression models: Support Vector Regression (SVR), Random Forest Regression (RFR), Histogram-based Gradient Boosting Regression Tree (HGBR), and Partial Least-Squares Regression (PLSR). We assessed the accuracy of individual features as well as various combinations of feature levels. Among the three sensors, HSI exhibited the most promising results due to its rich spectral information, surpassing the performance of LiDAR and RGB. Notably, the fusion of multiple features outperformed any single component, with the combination of all features of all sensors achieving the highest R2 value of 0.782. HSI, especially when utilized in calculating vegetation indices, emerged as the most critical feature in the combination experiments. LiDAR played a relatively smaller role in potato LAI estimation compared to HSI and RGB. Additionally, we discovered that the RFR excelled at effectively integrating features.