Primary Production Prediction from Aerial Spectrographic Survey

Abstract

The abandonment of mountain agriculture in Europe is a phenomenon that has been going on since the post-war period to the present day. This is because the hostile environment, more adverse climatic conditions, lower yields and lack of space have always favoured crops in flat locations. However, this has led to a more or less marked abandonment of the mountains by the local population. The BROTWEG project was born with the aim of reversing this trend by developing and providing the technologies for sustainable and mechanized cereal cultivation even in the high mountains. This in particular following a short supply chain system: (a) cultivation of cereals in small/medium plots by creating new technologies for mechanised seeding - avoiding the erosion-prone tillage - and harvesting on steep slopes up to 80%, (b) post-harvest operations (drying and milling) carried out directly within the farm, (c) bread-making. In this scenario, monitoring the crops, as well as the field yield, becomes very important and necessary to promptly respond to any issue and thus ensuring a successful harvest. In this work an attempt is made to estimate the field yield by means of spectrographic surveys, conducted with a UAV. The idea is to discern between crops and weeds by evaluating some vegetation indices: when the grain reaches the maturity its viability is very low, whereas that of the weed remains medium/high. Therefore, a low vitality in an area means high productivity since all the analysed space is suppose to be covered by only grain.