Journal of Zhejiang University SCIENCE B
ISSN 1673-1581(Print), 1862-1783(Online), Monthly

2008   Vol. 9   No. 5   p. 378~384

Quantifying biochemical variables of corn by hyperspectral reflectance at leaf scale

Qiu-xiang YI¹, Jing-feng HUANG^†‡1, Fu-min WANG¹, Xiu-zhen WANG²

(¹Institute of Remote Sensing and Information Technology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310029, China)
(²Institute of Zhejiang Meteorology, Hangzhou 310004, China)
^‡ Corresponding Author
^†E-mail: hjf@zju.edu.cn
Received Sept. 28, 2007; revision accepted Feb. 21, 2008

Abstract: To further develop the methods to remotely sense the biochemical content of plant canopies, we report the results of an experiment to estimate the concentrations of three biochemical variables of corn, i.e., nitrogen (N), crude fat (EE) and crude fiber (CF) concentrations, by spectral reflectance and the first derivative reflectance at fresh leaf scale. The correlations between spectral reflectance and the first derivative transformation and three biochemical variables were analyzed, and a set of estimation models were established using curve-fitting analyses. Coefficient of determination (R²), root mean square error (RMSE) and relative error of prediction (REP) of estimation models were calculated for the model quality evaluations, and the possible optimum estimation models of three biochemical variables were proposed, with R² being 0.891, 0.698 and 0.480 for the estimation models of N, EE and CF concentrations, respectively. The results also indicate that using the first derivative reflectance was better than using raw spectral reflectance for all three biochemical variables estimation, and that the first derivative reflectances at 759 nm, 1954 nm and 2370 nm were most suitable to develop the estimation models of N, EE and CF concentrations, respectively. In addition, the high correlation coefficients of the theoretical and the measured biochemical parameters were obtained, especially for nitrogen (r=0.948).

Key words: Biochemical variables, Corn, The first derivative spectral reflectance, Spectral reflectance
doi:10.1631/jzus.B0730019             CLC number: S127

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