The Applications of UAV and Ground Digital Imagery Analysis for Monitoring Grapevine Canopy in Vineyard

Abstract

Canopy management is one of the key aspects of vineyard management. Understanding the canopy structure can provide valuable insights and guide canopy management to improve vineyard performance. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), in combination with different sensors, can be used to capture high-resolution imagery to analyse canopy structure. To explore the potentials of UAV, innovative UAV applications, including monitoring canopy development, evaluating canopy management outcomes and detecting canopy gaps, were studied in vineyards across South Australia. Customised computer codes were developed to analyse the imagery collected and process the reconstructed three-dimensional vineyard models (digital surface model and point cloud). Ground imagery analysis and manual measurements were used as ground-truth validations. Results showed UAV can effectively estimate canopy structure. Imagery and canopy models can provide canopy structure volumetric information that are otherwise challenging to achieve in field. Future improvements should focus on creating more easily operated, open-sourced and reliable UAV systems for canopy structure measurements.