Discriminating Weeds from Processing Tomato Plants using Visible and Near Infrared Reflectance

Nightshade weeds in California processing tomato fields were studied to determine if visible and near infrared (400 to 2500 nm) reflectance spectroscopy could be used to discriminate nightshade weeds from tomato plants. Optical absorbance data in the 2120- to 2320-nm region gave the best classification rate between weeds and tomato (100%) using canonical discriminant analysis. The effect of reduced analog to digital conversion resolution on classifier performance was also studied.