Remotely Sensed Vegetation Indices to Discriminate Field-Grown Olive Cultivars

The application of spectral sensors mounted on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) assureshigh spatial and temporal resolutions. This research focused on canopy reflectance for cultivarrecognition in an olive grove. The ability in cultivar recognition of 14 vegetation indices (VIs)calculated from reflectance patterns (green520-600, red630-690 and near-infrared760-900 bands) andan image segmentation process was evaluated on an open-field olive grove with 10 dierentscion/rootstock combinations (two scions by five rootstocks). Univariate (ANOVA) and multivariate(principal components analysis--PCA and linear discriminant analysis--LDA) statistical approacheswere applied. The efficacy of VIs in scion recognition emerged clearly from all the approachesapplied, whereas discrimination between rootstocks appeared unclear. The results of LDA ascertainedthe efficacy of VI application to discriminate between scions with an accuracy of 90.9%, whereasrecognition of rootstocks failed in more than 68.2% of cases.