Weed Detection and Mapping of a Coffee Farm by a Remotely Piloted Aircraft System
Nicole Lopes Bento,
Gabriel Araújo e Silva Ferraz,
Jhones da Silva Amorim,
Lucas Santos Santana,
Rafael Alexandre Pena Barata,
Daniel Veiga Soares,
Patrícia Ferreira Ponciano Ferraz
Affiliations
Nicole Lopes Bento
Department of Agricultural Engineering, School of Engineering, Federal University of Lavras—UFLA, Trevo Rotatório Professor Edmir Sá Santos, s/n, P.O. Box 3037, Lavras 37200-900, Brazil
Gabriel Araújo e Silva Ferraz
Department of Agricultural Engineering, School of Engineering, Federal University of Lavras—UFLA, Trevo Rotatório Professor Edmir Sá Santos, s/n, P.O. Box 3037, Lavras 37200-900, Brazil
Jhones da Silva Amorim
Academic Unit Specialized in Agricultural Sciences, Agricultural School of Jundiaí, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, RN 160, Km 03, District of Jundiaí, P.O. Box 07, Macaíba 59280-000, Brazil
Lucas Santos Santana
Department of Agricultural Engineering, School of Engineering, Federal University of Lavras—UFLA, Trevo Rotatório Professor Edmir Sá Santos, s/n, P.O. Box 3037, Lavras 37200-900, Brazil
Rafael Alexandre Pena Barata
Department of Agricultural Engineering, School of Engineering, Federal University of Lavras—UFLA, Trevo Rotatório Professor Edmir Sá Santos, s/n, P.O. Box 3037, Lavras 37200-900, Brazil
Daniel Veiga Soares
Department of Agricultural Engineering, School of Engineering, Federal University of Lavras—UFLA, Trevo Rotatório Professor Edmir Sá Santos, s/n, P.O. Box 3037, Lavras 37200-900, Brazil
Patrícia Ferreira Ponciano Ferraz
Department of Agricultural Engineering, School of Engineering, Federal University of Lavras—UFLA, Trevo Rotatório Professor Edmir Sá Santos, s/n, P.O. Box 3037, Lavras 37200-900, Brazil
The differentiation between the main crop and weeds is an important step for selective spraying systems to avoid agrochemical waste and reduce economic and environmental impacts. In this sense, this study aims to classify and map the area occupied by weeds, determine the percentage of area occupied, and indicate treatment control strategies to be adopted in the field. This study was conducted by using a yellow Bourbon cultivar (IAC J10) with 1 year of implementation on a commercial coffee plantation located at Minas Gerais, Brazil. The aerial images were obtained by a remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) with an embedded multispectral sensor. Image processing was performed using PIX4D, and data analysis was performed using R and QGIS. The random forest (RF) and support vector machine (SVM) algorithms were used for the classification of the regions of interest: coffee, weed, brachiaria, and exposed soil. The differentiation between the study classes was possible due to the spectral differences between the targets, with better classification performance using the RF algorithm. The savings gained by only treating areas with the presence of weeds compared with treating the total study area are approximately 92.68%.
