Using temporal NDVI/MODIS profiles for inferences on the crop soybean calendar

A major challenge for grain yield modeling in the context of estimates made operationally for large areas is related to the identification of periods in which annual crops show greater susceptibility to environmental stress. For soybean grown in the spring-summer period in southern Brazil, the main risk factor is the occurrence of water stress during flowering and grain filling. These subperiods occur at different times across the production region due to differences in management practices of each farmer. This study aimed to relate the soybean crop calendar to the temporal profiles of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI/MODIS), in order to present/validate a low cost technology with adequate accuracy for crop monitoring and harvest prediction. Thus, we analyzed data from soybean crop calendar (subperiods of flowering, grain filling and maturation) from EMATER (RS) regions and NDVI MODIS images. The NDVI temporal profiles allow monitoring the development of the soybean crop biomass and determining the occurrence of subperiods. Differences in NDVI values between harvests, regions and subperiods demonstrate the sensitivity of this index in detecting the responses of soybean plants to environmental conditions. Because NDVI data are generated from MODIS images, it is possible to create maps with information about the subperiods for all harvests and throughout the State, which enables greater temporal and spatial details compared to data currently available.

cycle sub-periods; mapping; flowering; grain filling and maturation