Flowering Development Stage in Sorghum Estimated from Optical Polarization Data

Abstract

We tested the hypothesis that we can estimate the flowering developmentstage of sorghum from measurements of the polarization of the light scattered by asorghum canopy. Such information is critically important in agricultural productionforecasting. If such information were available for each sorghum field in a region, itcould be interleaved with timely weather data and used in crop production models toobtain improved estimates of sorghum grain production for the region.