How plant structure impacts the biochemical leaf traits assessment from in-field hyperspectral images: A simulation study based on light propagation modeling in 3D virtual wheat scenes

•Multiple scattering effects in the context of hyperspectral imagery are analyzed.•Numerical simulations are made using canopy and light propagation models.•Spectra generated by multiple scattering are mainly distributed in a 2D plan.•Multiple scattering effects are also evaluated in a trait prediction context.•Chemical traits prediction from observed spectra remains efficient on upper leaves. Light propagation modeling in 3-dimensional virtual scenes has been successfully applied to many fields, including plant canopies. However, its application to detailed analyses on how multiple scattering affects spectral-based biochemistry assessments has never been proposed. In this article, a wheat canopy model has been built using simulation models included in the open source software platform Open-Alea. Adel-Wheat, a 3D dynamic model of the aerial growth of winter wheat, has been associated with spectra collected on wheat leaves with an ASD spectrometer, and then used as input of the Caribu light propagation model. Caribu calculates the proportion of direct and scattered light for all polygons of the 3D scene. Principal component analysis was first applied to analyze the distribution of resulting spectra in the spectral feature space. Then the influence of canopy structure on quantitative regression models has been considered. For this purpose, a typical agronomical problem, i.e. nitrogen content retrieval, was addressed, using a Partial Least Square regression model. This study exhibits some important results concerning the distribution of collected spectra in the spectral feature space due to multiple scattering, and underlines the physical interpretation of these results. In the short term, it shows that satisfactory nitrogen content prediction (error about 0.5% of dry matter) can be obtained at the plant level, when considering only the plant top leaves. Moreover, its paves the way for future researches to develop spectral analysis tools able to overcome such multiple scattering phenomena.