Phenological and Spectral Unmixing-Based Identification of Corn Cultivars in Tuban Regency, Indonesia: An Analysis of Sentinel-2 and MODIS Data

Abstract In Indonesia, monitoring and mapping corn growth are crucial to promote the implementation of the Government Corn Reserve (CJP) as an alternative for improving national corn management. East Java is the highest corn producer in Indonesia, with Tuban Regency leading the production. According to data from the Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS) in 2024, corn production reached 788,477 tons by 2023. The advancement of technology in the food sector has led to the production of various corn cultivars, such as NK-6172, NK-212, and NK-7328, each with different traits and yields. Therefore, information on corn cultivars is important for predicting the harvest area of corn. Until now, the monitoring of the area and growth of corn in Indonesia has been conventional, requiring considerable time and high costs. Remote sensing technology can be utilized to monitor corn growth and distribution. Linear Spectral Unmixing can identify the distribution of corn areas for each cultivar, where phenology data are used for the date selection of Sentinel-2 satellite images. The results obtained from this study include the corn field area, corn growth phenology, endmember fraction of corn cultivars, and the area of dominant corn cultivars in the research area. The percentages of the dominant cultivars obtained were as follows: NK-6172 at 80.97%, NK-7328 at 15.55%, and NK-212 at 3.48%.