Exploring the potential of hyperspectral imaging to detect Esca disease complex in asymptomatic grapevine leaves

Abstract

Precise and reliable identification of specific plant diseases is a challenge within precision agriculture nowadays. This is the case of esca, a complex grapevine trunk disease, that represents a major threat to modern viticulture as it is responsible for large economic losses annually. The lack of effective control strategies and the complexity of esca disease expression make essential the identification of affected plants, before symptoms become evident, for a better management of the vineyard. This study evaluated the suitability of a near-infrared hyperspectral imaging (HSI) system to detect esca disease in asymptomatic grapevine leaves of Tempranillo red-berried cultivar. For this, 72 leaves from an experimental vineyard, naturally infected with esca, were collected and scanned with a lab-scale HSI system in the 900-1700 nm spectral range. Then, effective image processing and multivariate analysis techniques were merged to develop pixel-based classification models for the distinction of healthy, asymptomatic and symptomatic leaves. Automatic and interval partial least squares variable selection methods were tested to identify the most relevant wavelengths for the detection of esca-affected vines using partial least squares discriminant analysis and different pre-processing techniques. Three-class and two-class classifiers were carried out to differentiate healthy, asymptomatic and symptomatic leaf pixels, and healthy from asymptomatic pixels, respectively. Both variable selection methods performed similarly, achieving good classification rates in the range of 82.77-97.17% in validation datasets for either three-class or two-class classifiers. The latter results demonstrated the capability of hyperspectral imaging to distinguish two groups of seemingly identical leaves (healthy and asymptomatic). These findings would ease the annual monitoring of disease incidence in the vineyard and, therefore, better crop management and decision making.