UAV remote sensing for crop lodging monitoring: A comprehensive review

Abstract

Global agriculture is facing increasing pressure to improve productivity while minimizing losses caused by extreme climate events. Crop lodging poses a major threat to food security by reducing crop yield, deteriorating grain quality, and increasing harvesting costs. As a flexible, high-resolution remote sensing platform, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have emerged as an effective solution for eliminating the gap between labor-intensive ground surveys and low-resolution satellite observations. This review systematically synthesizes the current state of research on UAV-based crop lodging monitoring through a comprehensive analysis of peer-reviewed literature. It covers the complete technical workflow, from lodging mechanisms to lodging quantification. The capabilities of diverse sensing modalities, including RGB, multispectral imagery (MSI), hyperspectral imagery (HSI), thermal infrared (TIR), light detection and ranging (LiDAR), and synthetic aperture radar (SAR), are systematically evaluated for detecting lodging-induced variations in color, texture, spectral characteristics, canopy temperature, structural attributes, and radar backscatter. In addition, recent advances in analytical approaches are reviewed, encompassing traditional statistical analyses, machine learning techniques, and state-of-the-art deep learning models. Furthermore, the review summarizes UAV-based lodging assessments across a wide range of crop species and examines methods for quantifying key lodging parameters, including lodging severity, lodging type, and affected area. By identifying current research gaps and emerging opportunities, this review outlines future research directions and provides valuable guidance for advancing accurate, efficient, and real-time crop lodging monitoring in smart agriculture.