Strategy for Monitoring the Blast Incidence in Crops of Bomba Rice Variety Using Remote Sensing Data

In this paper, we investigated the monitoring and characterization of the pest Magnaporthe oryzae, known as rice blast, in the Bomba rice variety at the Albufera Natural Park, located in Valencia, Spain during the 2022 and 2023 seasons. Using reflectance data from different Sentinel-2 satellite bands, various vegetative indices were calculated for each year. Significant differences in reflectance in the visible (B4), infrared (B8), red-edge (B6 and B7), and SWIR (B11) bands were detected between healthy and unhealthy fields. Additionally, variations were observed in the vegetation indices, with RVI and IRECI standing out for their higher accuracy in identifying blast-affected plots compared to NDVI and NDRE. Early differences in band values, vegetative indices, and spectral signatures were observed between the unhealthy and healthy plots, allowing for the anticipation of control treatments, whose effectiveness relies on timely intervention.