A method for estimating chlorophyll content of wheat from reflectance spectra

Chlorophyll and carotenoid, relating to the physiological function of leaves, are two pigments which can absorb the light energy during the process of plant photosynthesis. Among the pigments, the chlorophyll plays an important role in the photosynthesis, and its content, as a predictor of the nutritional status of vegetation, is one of the main factors to evaluate the environment and growth conditions for the winter wheat. This work, based on the reflectance spectra of wheat in Xiao Tangshan County, in China, took PLS regression as the quantitative inversion method to have established the hyperspectral inversion model between chlorophyll content and the reflectance spectra of wheat. Through analysis, it indicated that the chlorophyll content of wheat was highly relative to the reflectance of hyperspectral from 350 nm to 1060 nm. The correlation coefficient between the prediction value and the measured value is as high as 0.9, and the RMSEP is lower than 0.4. The research provided an effective method to estimate the chlorophyll content using the quantitative inversion technology of hyperspectral RS.