Abstract
The use of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) pesticide spraying technology in precision agriculture is becoming increasingly important. However, traditional spraying methods struggle to address the precision application need caused by the canopy differences of fruit trees in orchards. This study proposes a UAV orchard variable-rate spraying method based on canopy volume. A DJI M300 drone equipped with LiDAR was used to capture high-precision 3D point cloud data of tree canopies. An improved progressive TIN densification (IPTD) filtering algorithm and a region-growing algorithm were applied to segment the point cloud of fruit trees, construct a canopy volume-based classification model, and generate a differentiated prescription map for spraying. A distributed multi-point spraying strategy was employed to optimize droplet deposition performance. Field experiments were conducted in a citrus (Citrus reticulata Blanco) orchard (73 trees) and a litchi (Litchi chinensis Sonn.) orchard (82 trees). Data analysis showed that variable-rate treatment in the litchi area achieved a maximum canopy coverage of 14.47% for large canopies, reducing ground deposition by 90.4% compared to the continuous spraying treatment; variable-rate treatment in the citrus area reached a maximum coverage of 9.68%, with ground deposition reduced by approximately 64.1% compared to the continuous spraying treatment. By matching spray volume to canopy demand, variable-rate spraying significantly improved droplet deposition targeting, validating the feasibility of the proposed method in reducing pesticide waste and environmental pollution and providing a scalable technical path for precision plant protection in orchards.
Abstract from the paper’s OpenAlex record; open copy licensed cc-by. Read at the source ↗
The text the model read, with the source record’s inline markup (italics, sub- and superscripts) rendered and its character entities decoded; quote offsets refer to the raw text.
Claims 5
Claim · model-written summary
Litchi variable-rate spraying reached 14.47% maximum large-canopy coverage.
LitchiOrganisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“variable-rate treatment in the litchi area achieved a maximum canopy coverage of 14.47% for large canopies”
Claim · model-written summary
Litchi variable-rate spraying reduced ground deposition 90.4% versus continuous spraying.
Not reportedTreatment
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“reducing ground deposition by 90.4% compared to the continuous spraying treatment”
e1“litchi area”
Claim · model-written summary
Citrus variable-rate spraying achieved 9.68% maximum canopy coverage.
CitrusOrganisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“variable-rate treatment in the citrus area reached a maximum coverage of 9.68%”
Claim · model-written summary
Citrus variable-rate spraying reduced ground deposition by approximately 64.1% versus continuous spraying.
- Outcome
- ground depositione0
- Direction
- reducede0
- Value
- approximately 64.1%e0
- Comparator
- continuous spraying treatmente0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“ground deposition reduced by approximately 64.1% compared to the continuous spraying treatment”
e1“citrus area”
Claim · model-written summary
Variable-rate spraying significantly improved droplet deposition targeting.
Not reportedComparator
Verbatim
e0“variable-rate spraying significantly improved droplet deposition targeting”
t0“Orchards”