This exercise aimed to colected the database published in Scientific date to analyse. I have chosen the “Ground reference data for sugarcane biomass estimation in São Paulo state, Brazil”
Description of the article
Sugarcane-producing countries must consider the importance of taking sugarcane production dynamics into account when making sustainable decisions. To effectively map these dynamics, sugarcane biophysical data is necessary, especially to tune agronomic models and validate indirect satellite measurements. The article presents a dataset comprising 3,500 sugarcane observations collected from four fields in the São Paulo state (Brazil) between October 2014 and October 2015. The dataset includes both non-destructive and destructive measurements of sugar cane plant. Thus, with this data it's possible to convert biometric measurements into biomass estimates based on empirical adjustment of allometric models. Therefore, the paper also addresses the precisions associated with the ground measurements and derived metrics, which can be useful for designing new sugarcane measurement campaigns.
Objective of this exercise
One important variable collected in the article was the Leaf area index. The Leaf area index (LAI) is a variable represents measures the area of green leaf in an area of a crop field. This variable is important to measure the intercepted solar radiation, which is linked to the potential photosynthesis of the plant. Moreover, the LAI is linked to other processes, such as transpiration and gas exchange. Thus, estimating this variable is important as a reference to plant health status. However, the LAI is a result of different traits of the plant, and understanding this relationship is essential to ensure LAI estimation. With that, to enhance the article database analysis, we performed a comparations between LAI and other variables collected in the field: Leaf length, Stalk height, Stalk thickness, and Cane density
Results
The LAI had a significant (p < 0.001) positive correlation with three of the four variables analyzed, Leaf length, Stalk height, and Stalk thickness. The higher correlation occurred with Stalk thickness (R² = 0.7) follow by Leaf length (R² = 0.61) and Stalk height (R² = 0.46). The cane density had no significance with LAI.
Figure 1. Relationship between leaf area index and four different variables leaf length, stalk height, stalk thickness, and cane density.