Monitoring Crop Growth Status Based on Optical Sensor

In order to detect the growth status and predict the yield of the crop, crop growth monitor measuring nitrogen content in the plant is developed based on optical principle. The monitor measures the spectral reflectance of the plant canopy at the 610 nm and 1220 nm wavebands, and then calculates the nitrogen content in the plant with the measured data. The field test was carried out to evaluate performance of the monitor. A portable multi-spectral radiometer named Crop Scan was used to measure the reflectance as a reference instrument. The result shows that the leaf reflectance measured by the monitor has a close linear correlation with that measured by Crop Scan at the 610 nm waveband (R2 = 0.7604), but the correlation between them is needed to be improved at the 1220 nm waveband. The hardware and the software of the monitor are also explained in detail. It is still need to be improved to satisfy the demand of ground-based remote sensing in precision farming.