Monitoring ratio of carbon to nitrogen (C/N) in wheat and barley leaves by using spectral slope features with branch-and-bound algorithm

Ratio of carbon to nitrogen concentration (C/N) that can illuminate metabolic status of C and N in crop leaves is one valuable indicator for crop nutrient diagnosis. This study explored the feasibility of using spectral slope features from hyperspectral measurements with Branch-and-Bound (BB) algorithm to monitor leaf C/N in wheat and barley. Experimental data from barley in 2010 and wheat in 2012 were collected and used. The analyses prove that leaf C/N is closely related to leaf N concentration (LNC), which implies that it is feasible to apply spectral technology to monitor leaf C/N in that LNC may have been effectivly estimated by hyperspectral measurements. The results also show that many spectral slope features proposed in this study exhibit the significant correlations with leaf C/N. The best slope feature could evaluate changes of leaf C/N well, with R(2) of 0.63 for wheat, 0.68 for barley and 0.65 for both species combined, respectively. using BB algorithm with input of optiaml four slope features can improve the accuracy of leaf C/N estimations with R(2) over 0.81. It is concluded that using the spectral slope new features with BB method appears very promising and potential for remotely monitoring leaf C/N in crops.