Using Remote Sensing Vegetation Indices for the Discrimination and Monitoring of Agricultural Crops: A Critical Review

The agricultural sector is currently confronting multifaceted challenges such as an increased food demand, slow adoption of sustainable farming, a need for climate-resilient food systems, resource inequity, and the protection of small-scale farmers’ practices. These issues are integral to food security and environmental health. Remote sensing technologies can assist precision agriculture in effectively addressing these complex problems by providing farmers with high-resolution lenses. The use of vegetation indices (VIs) is an essential component of remote sensing, which combines the variability of spectral reflectance value (derived from remote sensing data) with the growth stage of crops. A wide array of VIs can be used to classify the crops and evaluate their state and health. However, precisely this high number leads to difficulty in selecting the best VI and their combination for specific objectives. Without thorough documentation and analysis of appropriate VIs, users might find it difficult to use remote sensing data or obtain results with very low accuracy. Thus, the objective of this review is to conduct a critical analysis of the existing state of the art on the effective use of VIs for the discrimination and monitoring of several important agricultural crops (wheat, corn, sunflower, soybean, rape, potatoes, and forage crops), grasslands and meadows. This data could be highly useful for all the stakeholders involved in agricultural activities. The current review has shown that VIs appear to be suitable for mapping and monitoring agricultural crops, forage crops, meadows and pastures. Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data were the most utilized sources, while some of the frequently used VIs were EVI, LAI, NDVI, GNDVI, PSRI, and SAVI. In most of the studies, an array of VIs needed to be employed to achieve a good discrimination of crops or prediction of yields. The main challenges in using VIs are related to the variation of the spectral characteristics during the vegetation period and to the similarities of the spectral signatures of various crops and semi-natural meadows. Thus, further studies are needed to establish appropriate models for the use of satellite data that would prove to have greater accuracy and provide more relevant information for the efficient monitoring of agricultural crops.