Monitoring of rice plants population density is important for crop setting and fertilizer management to achieve high target yield. Currently, the population density is determined by manually counting the tiller number of total rice plants in a 25 cm x 25 cm square frame. Generally, several random sampling locations of a paddy plot are selected to perform tiller counting. This is time-consuming, labour intensive and costly. An automatic counting tiller number method using digital image processing technique is introduced to overcome the problem. Monitoring paddy population can be done by using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) or Drones. The use of drones can take a wider picture, save time and be more efficient. For this research, the DJI Mavic Pro Drone is used to scout the areas. The drone has captured the image from the air and sending to the computer via wireless. The image is processed in different technique such as filtering, enhancement, segmentation and thresholding. As a result, the image processing technique is practical, feasible and effective in estimating tiller number for monitoring of rice plant population density.
