Case Study: Cost-effective Weed Patch Detection by Multi-Spectral Camera Mounted on Unmanned Aerial Vehicle in the Buckwheat Field

Weed control is a crucial practice not only in organic farming, but also in modern agriculture because it can lead to loss in crop yield. In general, weed is distributed in patches heterogeneously in the field. These patches vary in size, shape, and density. Thus, it would be efficient if chemicals are sprayed on these patches rather than spraying uniformly in the field, which can pollute the environment and be cost prohibitive. In this sense, weed detection could be beneficial for sustainable agriculture. Studies have been conducted to detect weed patches in the field using remote sensing technologies, which can be classified into a method using image segmentation based on morphology and a method with vegetative indices based on the wavelength of light. In this study, the latter methodology has been used to detect the weed patches. As a result, it was found that the vegetative indices were easier to operate as it did not need any sophisticated algorithm for differentiating weeds from crop and soil as compared to the former method. Consequently, we demonstrated that the current method of using vegetative index is accurate enough to detect weed patches, and will be useful for farmers to control weeds with minimal use of chemicals and in a more precise manner.