Estimating Winter Wheat Plant Nitrogen Content by Combining Spectral and Texture Features Based on a Low-Cost UAV RGB System throughout the Growing Season

As prior information for precise nitrogen fertilization management, plant nitrogen content (PNC), which is obtained timely and accurately through a low-cost method, is of great significance for national grain security and sustainable social development. In this study, the potential of the low-cost unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) RGB system was investigated for the rapid and accurate estimation of winter wheat PNC across the growing season. Specifically, texture features were utilized as complements to the commonly used spectral information. Five machine learning regression algorithms, including support vector machines (SVMs), classification and regression trees, artificial neural networks, K-nearest neighbors, and random forests, were employed to establish the bridge between UAV RGB image-derived features and ground-truth PNC, with multivariate linear regression serving as the reference. The results show that both spectral and texture features had significant correlations with ground-truth PNC, indicating the potential of low-cost UAV RGB images to estimate winter wheat PNC. The H channel, S4O6, and RSE and REN had the highest correlation among the spectral indices, Gabor texture features, and grey level co-occurrence matrix texture features, with absolute Pearson’s correlation coefficient values of 0. 63, 0. 54, and 0. 69, respectively. When the texture features were used together with spectral indices, the PNC estimation accuracy was enhanced, with the root mean square error (RMSE) decreasing from 2. 56 to 2. 24 g/kg, for instance, when using the SVM regression algorithm. The SVM regression algorithm with validation achieved the highest estimation accuracy, with a coefficient of determination (R2) of 0. 62 and an RMSE of 2. 15 g/kg based on the optimal feature combination of BCON, BM, GDIS, H, NGBDI, REN, RM, RSE, S3O7, and VEG. Overall, this study demonstrated that the low-cost UAV RGB system could be successfully used to map the PNC of winter wheat across the growing season.