High‐throughput assessment of plant stand establishment, seedling vigor, and light interception in peanut using UAV‐based RGB and multispectral imagery

Abstract

In peanut ( Arachis hypogaea L.), plant stand establishment, seedling vigor, and canopy growth are key determinants of crop performance; yet traditional ground‐based assessment methods can be destructive, labor‐intensive, and limited in throughput. This study evaluated the potential of vegetation metrics derived from unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)‐based red‐green‐blue (RGB) and multispectral (MS) imagery for high‐throughput, nondestructive assessment of plant stand establishment, seedling vigor, and light interception in peanut. Six runner‐type peanut cultivars were evaluated in 2024 and seven in 2025, with each cultivar represented by two seed size classes (small and large), to generate variation in these traits. Within‐row vegetation discontinuity‐based plant stand ratings for estimating plant stand count ( R ²  = 0.81–0.90), together with canopy coverage for assessing seedling biomass ( R ²  = 0.77–0.82) and light interception ( R ²  = 0.96–0.98), were the best‐performing vegetation metrics. These vegetation metrics provided similar or greater cultivar separation compared with ground‐based measurements. In contrast, several vegetation indices exhibited strong correlations with ground‐based measurements but provided inconsistent cultivar rankings and statistical groupings. MS imagery outperformed RGB imagery for plant stand and seedling biomass assessment. Overall, these results demonstrate that UAV‐derived canopy metrics provide reliable, high‐throughput tools for early‐ to mid‐season crop assessment and offer scalable alternatives to traditional ground‐based approaches for agronomic, crop physiological, and plant breeding research.