Equipment to characterize the vegetation
The third LAFO component comprises various instruments to characterize the vegetation.
BreedVision phenotyping platform
The State Plant Breeding Institute in collaboration with Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences has developed the “BreedVision” phenotyping platform, comprising a tractor and a sensor module. The tractor is a high-wheel tractor specially adapted to the requirements of the sensor module. The track width as well as the clearance of the tractor can be hydraulically adjusted.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
These include Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) to record plant characteristics; such vehicles meanwhile represent an innovative alternative to classical remote sensing with manned aircraft or satellites due to their low cost and the short-term availability of sensor data with high spatial resolution.
Several spectral bands are necessary to compute the Red Edge Inflection Point (REIP), which is needed to determine the vegetation indices to derive biomass and nitrogen supply. The UAV available at the Institute of Crop Science is a commercial hexacopter, equipped with a REIP camera.