Determination of leaf nitrogen content in apple and jujube by near-infrared spectroscopy

The nitrogen content of apple leaves and jujube leaves is an important index to judge the growth and development of apple trees and jujube trees to a certain extent. The prediction performance of the two samples was compared between different models for leaf nitrogen content, respectively. The near-infrared absorption spectra of 287 apple leaf samples and 192 jujube leaf samples were collected. After eliminating the outliers by Mahalanobis distance method, the remaining spectral data were processed by six different preprocessing methods. BP neural network (BP), random forest regression (RF), least partial squares (PLS), K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN), and support vector regression (SVR) were compared to establish prediction models of nitrogen content in apple leaves and jujube leaves. The results showed that the determination coefficient (R²), root mean square error (RMSE) and residual prediction deviation (RPD) of the models established by different combined pretreatment methods were compared among the five methods. Compared with the performance of the other four models, the modeling method of SG + SD + CARS + RF was suitable for the prediction of nitrogen content in apple leaves, and its modeling set R² was 0.85408, RMSE was 0.082188, and RPD was 2.5864. The validation set R² is 0.75527, RMSE is 0.099028, RPD is 2.1956. The modeling method of FD + CARS + PLS was suitable for the prediction of nitrogen content in jujube leaves. The modeling set R² was 0.7954, RMSE was 0.14558, and RPD was 2.4264; the validation set R² is 0.81348, RMSE is 0.089217, and RPD is 2.4552.In the prediction modeling of apple leaf nitrogen content in the characteristic band, the model quality of RF was better than the other four prediction models. The model quality of PLS in predictive modeling of nitrogen content of jujube leaves in characteristic bands is superior to the other four predictive models, These results provide a reference for the use of near-infrared spectroscopy to determine whether apple trees and jujube trees are deficient in nutrients.