Thermographic medium-far ground-based proximal sensing for in-field wheat Stagonospora nodorum blotch detection

• Published in: Journal of plant diseases and protection (2006) 2013-12, Vol.120 (5/6), p.205-208
• Main Authors: Antonucci, Francesca, Menesatti, Paolo, Iori, Angela, Pallottino, Federico, D'Egidio, Maria Grazia, Costa, Corrado
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Biomedical and Life Sciences; Fungal diseases; Fungal infections; Fungicides; Imaging; Infections; Life Sciences; Plant diseases; Plant Pathology; Plant Physiology; Plant Sciences; Plants; Precision agriculture; Short Communication; Thermography; Thrombin time
• ISSN: 1861-3829; 1861-3837
• DOI: 10.1007/BF03356476

Thermal imaging is a potential remote sensing tool for estimating fungal wheat diseases. This study for the first time investigated the suitability of infrared thermography as rapid non-destructive technique to detect Stagonospora nodorum blotch wheat infection observing differences in temperatures due to loss of water content in infected wheat. Analyses were conducted in-field using medium-far ground-based proximal sensing technique. The study demonstrated statistically significant differences between images relative to different plots planted with two cultivars treated with three different conditions: artificially inoculated with Stagonospora nodorum (IN), treated with fungicide (TT) and not inoculated nor treated (NT). This study is oriented on medium-far ground-based proximal sensing in order to frame an area of medium extension (~10-20 m²), placing the acquisition system at the bottom of each plot with a height of 4 m. Fiftythree thermal images of durum wheat plants have been acquired at growth stage 83, with a FLIR (S40) thermocamera. A randomized split-plot design with three replicates has been utilized. Regions of interest were extracted from each plot image and thus, mean temperature and relative ± standard deviation were calculated. The two-tailed (Wilcoxon) Mann-Whitney U test has been used to evidence whether the medians of couples of diverse treatments were different. Considering the whole samples significant differences (p < 0.05) have been observed between IN and TT.