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Abstract
An expert decision support system for agricultural management called CALEX is currently being developed. The program runs on any IBM compatible personal computer with 256K or more of memory and either two floppy disk drives or a hard disk and one floppy disk drive.
Current methods of making crop cover estimates are time-consuming and tend to be highly variable. A low-cost, digital, red/near-infrared band ratioing camera (Dycam Inc., Chatsworth, Calif.) and accompanying software (S. Heinold, Woodland Hills, Calif.) were evaluated for estimating crop cover. The camera was tested using a set of images having leaf areas of known sizes with different crop, soil, and lighting conditions. In the field, camera-based crop cover estimates were compared to light bar measured estimates. Results indicate that the camera and image analysis software are capable of estimating percent crop cover over a range of soil, crop, and lighting environments. Camera-based crop cover estimates were highly correlated with light bar estimates (tomato r 2 = 0.96, cotton r 2 = 0.98). Under the conditions tested, the camera appears to be a useful tool for monitoring crop growth in the field.