Crop performance, aerial, and satellite data from multistate maize yield trials

Accurate genotype-specific early yield estimates at fields and plots offer potential benefits to farmers in optimizing their agronomic practices, breeders in screening hundreds and thousands of varieties, and policymakers in decisions contributing to the overall improvement of agriculture and food production systems. Effective, generalizable approaches to track plant growth and predict yield at the individual plot level require large matched datasets of remote sensing and ground truth data collected across multiple environments. Low-altitude drone flights are increasingly being used to collect data from field evaluations of new crop varieties, while satellite imagery is being explored to track yield and management practices at the regional and field scales. Despite their lower spatial resolution, satellite platforms exhibit multiple logistical and technical advantages in scalability and accessibility, and could facilitate plot-level predictions, especially with steadily improving spatia..., UAV Image Acquisition and Processing
UAV visible spectral (RGB) imagery was collected at three time points per location. The goal was to acquire images of maize during the vegetative, reproductive, and post-flowering growth stages from the fields at each location, capturing images at three different time points (Supplemental Data Set S1). In Scottsbluff, NE, images were acquired with DJI Matrice 600 Pro with DJI Zenmuse X3 and a 12 Mega Pixel (MP) RGB (red, green, blue) camera as an image acquisition sensor. Images were acquired at an altitude of 100 ft (30.48 m) with a front overlap of 90% and a side overlap of 65%. In North Platte, images were acquired using DJI Inspire 2 with a Sentra Double 4K AG+ RGB camera as an image sensor at an altitude of 50 ft (15.24 m) with front and side overlap of 70%. In Lincoln, images were acquired with a DJI Phantom 4 RTK with a DJI Zenmuse P1 camera, with a 45 MP RGB camera as an image acquisition sensor. Images were acquired at an altitude of 115 ft ..., , # Crop performance, aerial, and satellite data from multistate maize yield trials

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.905qftttm](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.905qftttm)

Maize (*Zea mays*) field experiments were conducted at five locations in 2022: Scottsbluff, NE, Lincoln, NE, Missouri Valley, IA, and Ames, IA with two-thirds of the experiment in one field and one-third of the experiment in another field and Crawfordsville, IA.

This file describes the organization and format of the satellite, UAV, and ground truth data published in Shrestha et al. In addition, we provide an example code for searching and retrieving images from individual hybrid corn research plots as well as calculating the wavelength intensity values and indices employed in our study.

## Directory Layout:

* **Satellite**
* Five directories correspond to five of the six locations from which satellite imagery was collected (North Platte, NE was excluded because of issues with plot segmentation).
* Six dir...