Abstract: Imaging spectrometer is a new kind of remote sensing sensor, which receives images of ground objects and their spectrum components. It has great potentials in accurately quantitative analysis with remote sensing of high spatial and spectral resolutions. MSI200 is an imaging spectrometer manufactured by the authors. It was used in this study to monitor canopy chlorophyll density in winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) at seedling stage in comparison with ASD Fieldspc FR2500, a well-known non-imaging spectrometer. Correlation analysis showed that R720, FD660, FD550, TCARI, GNDVI, PPR (550, 450), and NRI obtained by the 2 spectrometers were both significantly correlated (P<0.01) with canopy chlorophyll density. This primarily indicated the reliability of MSI200. The precisions of predicted model on chlorophyll density were 91.26–95.54% and 86.61–92.79% for MSI200 and ASD Fieldspc FR2500, respectively. Among these parameters, PPR was the best one to monitor canopy chlorophyll density with root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.0979 and 0.8391 for MSI200 and ASD Fieldspc FR2500, respectively. Compared with the traditional non-imaging spectrometers, MSI200 predicted better the canopy chlorophyll density in wheat with smaller errors, and the selected wavelengths were important to spaceflight and airborne remote sense.

Key words: Winter wheat, Seedling, Canopy, Chlorophyll density, Imaging spectrometer MSI200, Non-imaging spectrometer ASD Fieldspc FR2500