Analysis of Oil Palms with Basal Stem Rot Disease with L Band SAR Data

Oil palm is one of the main cash crops in Malaysia and like all crops; oil palms are susceptible to disease threats that can reduce the economical lifespan. Huge plantation sizes caused traditional methods of monitoring to be labor intensive and inefficient. In this study, the L band image of microwave synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite was analysed for detection of basal stem rot (BSR) disease in oil palm. The infection of BSR in oil palms will cause the structural deterioration of the oil palm canopy layer. As L band SAR is likely to detect structural change and difference in backscatter coefficient between healthy and infected oil palms; this can be used for reference point in BSR disease detection. In this paper, biophysical parameters of Ganoderma infected palms with L band microwave backscatter coefficient were collected and compared to their healthy counterparts. The dense medium simulation was also done with the biophysical parameters obtained from field study and simulation result showed a good agreement with the satellite image data.