Research progress of crop diseases and pests monitoring based on remote sensing

For the monitoring of crop diseases and pests, traditional methods are still commonly used for data collection such as manual inspection and field sampling. However, these methods are not only time consuming, labor intensive, but also lack of generality and effectiveness, and tend to be subjective, which cannot satisfy the real-time monitoring of crop diseases and pests over vast area. Recently, the development of remote sensing provided an important mean for large area and rapidly obtaining crops and environmental information. This method showed a promising potential as an alternative method to traditional methods in disease monitoring, forecasting and yield loss assessment. Based on the description of physiological mechanism that crop diseases and pests stressed spectral response, some effective spectral wavelengths, and vegetation indices for crop diseases or pests monitoring were summarized and sorted. In addition, a number of algorithms used to identify diseases and pests identification, to monitor their severity, and to assess yield loss were also reviewed. Then, challenge problems of key technology on monitoring crop diseases and pests with remote sensing was also pointed out, and some possible solutions and tendencies how to realize large area monitoring the crops diseases and pests in future were also provided.