Remote sensing enables high discrimination between organic and non-organic cotton for organic cotton certification in West Africa

One of the challenges of organic crop certification is the efficient targeting of the relatively small percentage of risk-sensitive fields that have to be controlled during the regulatory annual in situ inspection. A previous study carried out on wheat and maize in Germany has shown that organic and non-organic crops can be efficiently distinguished by remote sensing. That study pointed to the possibility that these techniques could be used for helping organic crop certification bodies to better target risk-sensitive fields. This study is a first adaptation of that research on organic cotton in southwestern Burkina Faso, West Africa. This study assumed that organic and non-organic cotton, primarily because of their different approaches to fertilization and pest control, would result in bio-chemico-physical differences measurable by both in situ and remote sensing indicators. This study included 100 cotton fields, of which 50 were organic, 28 conventional, and 22 genetically modified. In situ indicators were derived from chlorophyll content, canopy cover, height, and spatial heterogeneity measurements. Remote sensing spectral and spatial heterogeneity indicators were derived from two SPOT 5 satellite images. Discriminant models were then computed. The results show statistically highly significant differences between organic and non-organic cotton fields for both in situ and satellite indicators, using univariate and multivariate linear models, with up to 86 % discrimination performance. This is the first time that the efficiency of using remote sensing to discriminate between organic and non-organic crops is evaluated in a developing country, particularly for cotton, with good discrimination being achieved. Pending further validation, it therefore seems that remote sensing could be used to enhance organic cotton certification in West Africa by enabling more efficient targeting of suspect fields and consequently could contribute to a better development of this sector.