Crop Water Requirement Estimation for Rubber Plantation Using Hyperspectral Remote Sensing

Rubber is one of the primary plantations in India that cultivates a substantial amount of flora. The crop is extensively cultivated across the nation due to its significant market value. A section of the Madikeri taluk in the Kodagu region of Karnataka will be the area of interest for this research work. Precisely calculating the quantity of irrigation water required for the crop is crucial for boosting productivity, particularly in the summer, as well as for developing sustainable water resource management strategies. The entire amount of water required to stabilize evapotranspiration–a function of both crop and local climatic conditions–is known as crop water need or requirement (CWR). Computing crop evapotranspiration is a popular technique for calculating agricultural water requirements. Traditional methods of area-based forecasting are proved to be non-economical and tedious. Recent developments in hyperspectral technology for remote sensing can aid in achieving satisfactory results. In order to evaluate CWR for rubber plantation in the study area, crop coefficients are computed using an Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)-based technique, and the reference crop evapotranspiration is computed using the Hargreaves and Samani equation. Based on these equations, the CWR for rubber plantation in the study area varied from a minimum of 0.45 to maximum of $2.97 \mathrm{~mm} /$ day.