Evaluation of a portable sensor suite for real time CWSI monitoring in wheat

Among the bunch of phenotypes and crop characteristics that can be monitored, crop temperature has been related to water use and plant water-stress parameters. However, its absolute value is affected by the prevailing environmental conditions and indices such as the crop water stress index (CWSI) are widely used to normalize the crop temperature against changing climatic conditions. For the calculation of CWSI, canopy temperature and two reference temperatures (wet and dry reference temperatures) are required. Therefore, the aim of this research was to test the feasibility of new artificial wet and dry reference surfaces (WARS and DARS, respectively) that would be suitable to be mounted on HTPPs for real time CWSI estimation in wheat fields. The preliminary results show the potential of WARS and DARS to provide the required wet and dry reference.