A Study on growth condition analysis of rice using drones

Abstract

Self-sufficiency of food is one of the most important target for Japan, however, because of decreasing the population of agriculture sector due to the progress of aging, it is difficult to realize this target. One of the main reasons of decreasing the population in agriculture is hard work in the field and requirement of experience. Our study focuses on supporting aging farmers, weekend farmers and new comers in the agriculture to reduce labor and cost, and providing system to compensate experience by using ICT. For this purpose, we are developing technology to evaluate growing condition of rice and vegetables in a field by using a drone and a multi-spectrum camera. By using this technology, it might be possible to reduce the hard work under the scorching sun and to support unexperienced young farmers. In this paper, we mention the outline of the technology that we used and the result of feasibility study to analyze growth condition of rice using drone. We measured normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and normalized difference red edge index (NDRE) from a drone and analyzed the data to estimate growth condition of rice. We found it was possible to find the area where growth is delaying and estimate heading day.