AN APPLICATION OF SOIL ELECTRICAL CONDUCTIVITY MAPPING OF SOIL pH AND NDVI INDEXES IN SMALL-SCALE DURIAN ORCHARDS MANAGEMENT
Abstract
Durian is hailed as the king of fruits and is widely cultivated in the Mekong Delta region. However, most cultivation and orchard management techniques rely on experience combined with expert recommendations. The purpose of this research is to utilize soil EC (electrical conductivity), soil pH, and NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index) indices obtained from UAVs to develop a comprehensive management solution for durian orchards. The research results demonstrate a correlation between soil EC and moisture obtained from the Wenner method and ES-SM-THEC-01 sensor with an R2 value of 0.9081. The correlation between soil EC and NDVI is r = 0.754, p = 0, N = 116 (Pearson correlation). Although soil EC and pH maps were created on a small scale, they reflected the heterogeneous distribution based on crop locations. The research results can be further refined and developed into an effective toolkit to provide farmers with better orchard management tools.