Use of Unmanned Aircraft for Assessment of Maize Vegetation in Southern Dobruja

Remote monitoring used for assessment of crops development serves the needs of precision agriculture in the attempt of improving the quality of agricultural products. The aim of this work is to evaluate the effectiveness of eight plant indices identifying the maize vegetation at southern Dobrudja in 2021. The source of empirical data for this survey are the multispectral images obtained from a digital NIR camera mounted on a remotely piloted drone. Two distinct fields with maize crops were inspected at the Dobruja district, Bulgaria within the period of intensive growth. Eight vegetation indices (NDVI, EVI2, SAVI, NDWI, RDVI, CVI, MGVRI, MPRI) are estimated in the experiment and seven of them led to a general trend of the index change. The applied method of data collection and post-processing approach give satisfactory results.