Detection of symptoms induced by vascular plant pathogens in tree crops using high-resolution satellite data: modelling and assessment with airborne hyperspectral imagery

Infection by the fungus Verticillium dahliae (Vd) and the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa (Xf) threatens the production of olives and almonds worldwide. Hyperspectral, narrow-band multispectral, and thermal imagery acquired at a high spatial resolution can detect disease symptoms, even before they are visible, allowing growers to distinguish infection from confounding environmental stresses. Here, we assessed the capacity of high-resolution Worldview-2 and -3 multispectral imagery to detect Xf and Vd infections in olive and almond orchards worldwide. We compared the accuracy of detecting both pathogens using satellite imagery with results obtained using aerial high-resolution hyperspectral and thermal imaging, with model-inverted plant traits, solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF), and thermal data as a reference. Our results using spectral plant traits to examine disease progression at all stages showed that traits and their importance varied as a function of disease severity. Worldview-2 and -3 detected the disease incidence with overall accuracies ranging from 0.63–0.83 and kappa coefficients (κ) ranging from 0.29–0.68. Adding a thermal-based crop water stress indicator to the satellite data improved the overall accuracies by 10%–15% and increased κ by more than 0.2 units.

POBLETE Tomas;  NAVAS-CORTES Juan A.;  HORNERO Alberto;  CAMINO GONZALEZ Carlos;  CALDERON Rocio;  HERNANDEZ-CLEMENTE Rocio;  LANDA Blanca;  ZARCO-TEJADA Pablo Jesus; 

2023-08-30

ELSEVIER SCIENCE INC

JRC130744

0034-4257 (online),   

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2023.113698,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC130744,   

10.1016/j.rse.2023.113698 (online),