Using SPOT-7 for Nitrogen Fertilizer Management in Oil Palm

Environmental concerns are growing about excessive applying nitrogen (N) fertilizers, especially in oil palm. Some conventional methods which are used to assess the amount of nutrient in oil palm are time-consuming, expensive, and involve frond destruction. Remote sensing as a non-destructive, affordable, and efficient method is widely used to detect the concentration of chlorophyll (Chl) from canopy plants using several vegetation indices (VIs) because there is an influential relation between the concentration of N in the leaves and canopy Chl content. The objectives of this research are to (i) evaluate and compare the performance of various vegetation indices (VIs) for measuring N status in oil palm canopy using SPOT-7 imagery (AIRBUS Defence & Space, Ottobrunn, Germany) to (ii) develop a regression formula that can predict the N content using satellite data to (iii) assess the regression formula performance on testing datasets by testing the coefficient of determination between the predicted and measured N contents. SPOT-7 was acquired in a 6-ha oil palm planted area in Pahang, Malaysia. To predict N content, 28 VIs based on the spectral range of SPOT-7 satellite images were evaluated. Several regression models were applied to determine the highest coefficient of determination between VIs and actual N content from leaf sampling. The modified soil-adjusted vegetation index (MSAVI) generated the highest coefficient of determination (R-2 = 0.93). MTVI1 and triangular VI had the highest second and third coefficient of determination with N content (R-2 = 0.926 and 0.923, respectively). The classification accuracy assessment of the developed model was evaluated using several statistical parameters such as the independent t-test, and p-value. The accuracy assessment of the developed model was more than 77%.