There’s a new way to estimate crop ground cover. It’s called the Perpendicular Vegetation Index (PVI) approach. Traditionally, remote-sensing-related precision agriculture applicaitons use the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) application. But, Nithya Rajan says her research suggests that the PVI way could be the better way. Nithya is a post-doctorate research assistant with Texas Tech University. She says results from studies conducuted in agricultural fields in the Texas High Plains show that PVI is more effective in constructing maps of crop ground cover than NDVI. The advantage comes, she says, from the fact that PVI does not require field scouting or empirical relationships like NDVI.

Nithya says the technology for PVI is fully available for interested researchers and growers. The next step, she says, is determining how this new technology fits best with real world applications. I spoke with Nithya about her research. You can listen to my interview with Nithya here:

Nithya Rajan, post-doctorate research assistant with Texas Tech University