Early Water Stress Detection Using Leaf-Level Measurements of Chlorophyll Fluorescence and Temperature Data

The purpose of this paper was to investigate the early water stress in maize using leaf-level measurements of chlorophyll fluorescence and temperature. In this study, a series of diurnal measurements, such as leaf chlorophyll fluorescence (Fs), leaf spectrum, temperature and photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), were conducted for maize during gradient watering and filled watering experiments. Fraunhofer Line Discriminator methods (FLD and 3FLD) were used to obtain fluorescence from leaves spectrum. This simulated work using the SCOPE model demonstrated the variations in fluorescence and temperature in stress levels expressed by different stress factors. In the field measurement, the gradient experiment revealed that chlorophyll fluorescence decreased for plants with water stress relative to well-water plants and Tleaf-Tair increased; the filled watering experiment stated that chlorophyll fluorescence of maize under water stress were similar to those of maize OPEN ACCESS Remote Sens. 2015, 7 3233 under well-watering condition. In addition, the relationships between the Fs, retrieved fluorescence, Tleaf-Tair and water content were analyzed. The Fs determination resulted to the best coefficients of determination for the normalized retrieved fluorescence FLD/PAR (R2 = 0.54), Tleaf-Tair (R2 = 0.48) and water content (R2 = 0.71). The normalized retrieved fluorescence yielded a good coefficient of determination for Tleaf-Tair (R2 = 0.48). This study demonstrated that chlorophyll fluorescence could reflect variations in the physiological states of plants during early water stress, and leaf temperature confirmed the chlorophyll fluorescence analysis results and improved the accuracy of the water stress detection.