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Sammendrag

Soil management is important for sustainable agriculture, playing a vital role in food production and maintaining ecological functions in the agroecosystem. Effective soil management depends on highly accurate soil property estimation. Machine learning (ML) is an effective tool for data mining, selection of key soil properties, modeling the non-linear relationship between different soil properties. Through coupling with spectral imaging, ML algorithms have been extensively used to estimate physical, chemical, and biological properties quickly and accurately for more effective soil management. Most of the soil properties are estimated by either near infrared (NIR), Vis-NIR, or mid-infrared (MIR) in combination with different ML algorithms. Spectroscopy is widely used in estimation of chemical properties of soil samples. Spectral imaging from both UAV and satellite platforms should be taken to improve the spatial resolution of different soil properties. Spectral image super-resolution should be taken to generate spectral images in high spatial, spectral, and temporal resolutions; more advanced algorithms, especially deep learning (DL) should be taken for soil properties’ estimation based on the generated ‘super’ images. Using hyperspectral modeling, soil water content, soil organic matter, total N, total K, total P, clay and sand were found to be successfully predicted. Generally, MIR produced better predictions than Vis-NIR, but Vis-NIR outperformed MIR for a number of properties. An advantage of Vis-NIR is instrument portability although a new range of MIR portable devices is becoming available. In-field predictions for water, total organic C, extractable phosphorus, and total N appear similar to laboratory methods, but there are issues regarding, for example, sample heterogeneity, moisture content, and surface roughness. More precise and detailed soil property estimation will facilitate future soil management.

Sammendrag

Weeds affect crop yield and quality due to competition for resources. In order to reduce the risk of yield losses due to weeds, herbicides or non-chemical measures are applied. Weeds, especially creeping perennial species, are generally distributed in patches within arable fields. Hence, instead of applying control measures uniformly, precision weeding or site-specific weed management (SSWM) is highly recommended. Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imaging is known for wide area coverage and flexible operation frequency, making it a potential solution to generate weed maps at a reasonable cost. Efficient weed mapping algorithms need to be developed together with UAV imagery to facilitate SSWM. Different machine learning (ML) approaches have been developed for image-based weed mapping, either classical ML models or the more up-to-date deep learning (DL) models taking full advantage of parallel computation on a GPU (graphics processing unit). Attention-based transformer DL models, which have seen a recent boom, are expected to overtake classical convolutional neural network (CNN) DL models. This inspired us to develop a transformer DL model for segmenting weeds, cereal crops, and ‘other’ in low-resolution RGB UAV imagery (about 33 mm ground sampling distance, g.s.d.) captured after the cereal crop had turned yellow. Images were acquired during three years in 15 fields with three cereal species (Triticum aestivum, Hordeum vulgare, and Avena sativa) and various weed flora dominated by creeping perennials (mainly Cirsium arvense and Elymus repens). The performance of our transformer model, 1Dtransformer, was evaluated through comparison with a classical DL model, 1DCNN, and two classical ML methods, i.e., random forest (RF) and k-nearest neighbor (KNN). The transformer model showed the best performance with an overall accuracy of 98.694% on pixels set aside for validation. It also agreed best and relatively well with ground reference data on total weed coverage, R2 = 0.598. In this study, we showed the outstanding performance and robustness of a 1Dtransformer model for weed mapping based on UAV imagery for the first time. The model can be used to obtain weed maps in cereals fields known to be infested by perennial weeds. These maps can be used as basis for the generation of prescription maps for SSWM, either pre-harvest, post-harvest, or in the next crop, by applying herbicides or non-chemical measures.

Sammendrag

Hyperspectral imaging has many applications. However, the high device costs and low hyperspectral image resolution are major obstacles limiting its wider application in agriculture and other fields. Hyperspectral image reconstruction from a single RGB image fully addresses these two problems. The robust HSCNN-R model with mean relative absolute error loss function and evaluated by the Mean Relative Absolute Error metric was selected through permutation tests from models with combinations of loss functions and evaluation metrics, using tomato as a case study. Hyperspectral images were subsequently reconstructed from single tomato RGB images taken by a smartphone camera. The reconstructed images were used to predict tomato quality properties such as the ratio of soluble solid content to total titratable acidity and normalized anthocyanin index. Both predicted parameters showed very good agreement with corresponding “ground truth” values and high significance in an F test. This study showed the suitability of hyperspectral image reconstruction from single RGB images for fruit quality control purposes, underpinning the potential of the technology—recovering hyperspectral properties in high resolution—for real-world, real time monitoring applications in agriculture any beyond.