Different units of measurement of carotenoids estimation in cotton using hyperspectral indices and partial least square regression

This paper examines the use of canopy reflectance for different units of measurements of carotenoids estimation. Field spectral measurements were collected over cotton in different intensive field campaigns organized during the growing seasons of 2010 and 2011. Three units of measurement were evaluated carotenoids expressed as a mass per unit soil surface area (g/m2), a mass per unit leaf area (μg/cm2), and a mass per unit fresh leaf weight (mg/g), respectively. Four methods were compared to retrieve amount of carotenoids: stepwise multiple linear regression (SMLR), published spectral indices, band combination indices, and partial least square regression (PLSR). Results show that maximum sensitivity of reflectance to variation in different units of measurement of carotenoids was found in the green region at 515–550 nm, and at 715 nm and 750 nm regions in the far-red wavelengths. The predictive accuracies of Car (g/m2), Car (μg/cm2) and Car (mg/g) were tested on a validation data set and the results show that the highest R2 values between estimations and observations were 0.468 for Car (g/m2), 0.563 for Car (μg/cm2), and 0.456 for Car (mg/g), with relative root mean square error (RMSE%, RMSE/mean) of 48.72%, 22.07% and 21.07%, respectively. Compared to Car (g/m2) and Car (mg/g), the model performance indices for Car (μg/cm2) show a high degree of consistency among the R2 values and RMSE% and MAE% values. Further comparison were performed among the estimation accuracies of different unit carotenoids and among the different approaches used in the study by a paired-t-test. The results indicate that although the best estimation results for Car (μg/cm2) and Car (mg/g) were both obtained based on PLSR, they can be estimated by all four adopted methods without significant differences (P > 0.1). Whereas for Car (g/m2), the best estimation results were obtained based on published vegetation indices CIred-edge, which were significantly better than the estimation results based on SMLR (P < 0.000). In summary, the results of this study show that even the carotenoids expressed on concentration (mg/g) or content (μg/cm2) basis at leaf level can be estimated with the same prediction accuracies to the carotenoids expressed as a mass per unit surface area (g/m2) at canopy level using reflectance measurement at canopy level.