Preliminary Results of Clover and Grass Coverage and Total Dry Matter Estimation in Clover-Grass Crops Using Image Analysis

The clover-grass ratio is an important factor in composing feed ratios for livestock. Cameras in the field allow the user to estimate the clover-grass ratio using image analysis; however, current methods assume the total dry matter is known. This paper presents the preliminary results of an image an...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of imaging 2017-12, Vol.3 (4), p.59
Main Authors: Mortensen, Anders, Karstoft, Henrik, Søegaard, Karen, Gislum, René, Jørgensen, Rasmus
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural engineering
Agricultural production
Biomass
Cameras
Cattle
Clover
Crops
Edge detection
Grasses
Histograms
Image analysis
Image classification
image processing
Image segmentation
International conferences
Legumes
Livestock
mixed-crops
Morphology
Neural networks
Nitrogen
non-destructive
Pattern recognition
Plant growth
Remote sensing systems
Scientific imaging
Semantics
Unmanned aerial vehicles
Vegetation
yield
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Summary:The clover-grass ratio is an important factor in composing feed ratios for livestock. Cameras in the field allow the user to estimate the clover-grass ratio using image analysis; however, current methods assume the total dry matter is known. This paper presents the preliminary results of an image analysis method for non-destructively estimating the total dry matter of clover-grass. The presented method includes three steps: (1) classification of image illumination using a histogram of the difference in excess green and excess red; (2) segmentation of clover and grass using edge detection and morphology; and (3) estimation of total dry matter using grass coverage derived from the segmentation and climate parameters. The method was developed and evaluated on images captured in a clover-grass plot experiment during the spring growing season. The preliminary results are promising and show a high correlation between the image-based total dry matter estimate and the harvested dry matter ( R 2 = 0.93 ) with an RMSE of 210 kg ha − 1 .
ISSN:2313-433X
2313-433X
DOI:10.3390/jimaging3040059