Multisensor fusion of remote sensing data for crop disease detection

Abstract

There is an increasing pressure to reduce use of pesticides in modern crop production in order to decrease the environmental impact of current practice and to lower the cost of production. It is therefore important that spraying of chemicals only takes place when and where it is really needed. Since disease appearance in fields is frequently patchy, sprays may be applied unnecessarily to disease-free areas. The control of disease could be more efficient if disease patches within fields could first be identified and then phytosanitary chemicals are applied only to the infected areas. Recent developments in optical sensor technology and control systems provide the potential to enable direct detection of foliar diseases under field conditions and subsequent precise application of chemicals through targeted spraying.