Stress indicators based on airborne thermal imagery for field phenotyping a heterogeneous tree population for response to water constraints.

As field phenotyping of plant response to water constraints constitutes a bottleneck for breeding programmes, airborne thermal imagery can contribute to assessing the water status of a wide range of individuals simultaneously. However, the presence of mixed soil-plant pixels in heterogeneous plant cover complicates the interpretation of canopy temperature. Moran's Water Deficit Index (WDI = 1-ETact/ETmax), which was designed to overcome this difficulty, was compared with surface minus air temperature (T s-T a) as a water stress indicator.

Can Commercial Digital Cameras Be Used as Multispectral Sensors? A Crop Monitoring Test.

The use of consumer digital cameras or webcams to characterize and monitor different features has become prevalent in various domains, especially in environmental applications. Despite some promising results, such digital camera systems generally suffer from signal aberrations due to the on-board image processing systems and thus offer limited quantitative data acquisition capability. The objective of this study was to test a series of radiometric corrections having the potential to reduce radiometric distortions linked to camera optics and environmental conditions, and to quantify the effects of these corrections on our ability to monitor crop variables.