Remote sensing inversion of nitrogen content in silage maize plants based on feature selection

Excessive nitrogen application and low nitrogen use efficiency have been major issues in China's agricultural development, posing significant challenges for field management. Nitrogen is a critical nutrient for crop growth, playing an indispensable role in crop development, yield formation, and quality enhancement. Therefore, precisely controlling nitrogen application rates can reduce environmental pollution caused by excessive fertilization and improve nitrogen use efficiency. This study employs multispectral remote sensing images, combined with field-measured nitrogen content, to develop canopy nitrogen content inversion models for maize using three algorithms: backpropagation neural network (BP), support vector machine (SVM), and partial least squares regression (PLSR). The results reveal that there is a degree of redundancy in the information contained in various spectral indices. Feature selection effectively eliminates correlated and redundant spectral information, thereby improving modeling efficiency. The spectral indices Green Index (GI) and Nitrogen Reflectance Index (NRI) exhibit strong correlations with nitrogen content in the maize canopy, suggesting that the green and red spectral bands are crucial for retrieving maize's biophysical and biochemical parameters. In studies on nitrogen content inversion in the maize canopy, the random forest (RF) algorithm, coupled with PLSR, demonstrated superior predictive performance. Compared to the standalone PLSR model, accuracy improved by 3.5%-6.5%, providing a scientific foundation and technical support for precise nitrogen diagnosis and fertilizer management in maize cultivation.