Hyperspectral Sensing and Machine Learning for Early Detection of Cereal Leaf Beetle Damage in Wheat: Insights for Precision Pest Management

The cereal leaf beetle (CLB; Oulema melanopus L., Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) is a serious pest of wheat, capable of causing yield losses of up to 40% through photosynthetic impairment. Early detection and severity assessment are essential for effective and sustainable pest management. This study evaluates the potential of hyperspectral remote sensing (RS) combined with machine learning (ML) for non-invasive detection of CLB-induced stress in winter wheat. Spectral reflectance was measured using a full-range spectroradiometer (350–2500 nm) from flag leaves categorized into four damage levels (healthy, slightly, moderately, and severely damaged). Three input datasets were used for ML classification: full spectral reflectance, a set of 13 vegetation indices (VIs), and outputs of dimensionality reduction technique. CLB stress increased reflectance in the visible range (400–700 nm) and reduced it in the near-infrared (700–1400 nm), consistent with chlorophyll degradation and mesophyll damage. Several VIs, including RIGreen, NDVI750, GNDVI, and NDVI, correlated strongly with damage severity (τ = 0.78–0.81). Among the six ML models tested, Support Vector Machine (SVM) achieved the highest classification accuracy of 90.0% (precision = 0.90, recall = 0.90, F1 = 0.90) across the four severity classes, and achieved 91.9% accuracy at the early-detection threshold. As far as the currently available literature indicates, this study provides one of the earliest quantitative assessments of CLB damage severity based on full-spectrum leaf-level hyperspectral reflectance integrated with ML classification. These findings were obtained under controlled, leaf-level measurement conditions and therefore represent a proof-of-concept; future validation using UAV and satellite platforms is needed to assess performance under operational field variability. Overall, our findings highlight the potential of hyperspectral RS and ML for precision pest monitoring, supporting threshold-based decision-making and more sustainable insecticide use.