A design-based approach to the estimation of plant density using point-to-plant sampling

A relationship between plant density and the probability density function of the squared point-to-plant distance is found when a design-based approach is considered. The estimation of the probability density function (and consequently of plant density) is performed using a boundary kernel estimator. Accordingly, by means of a simulation study, the performance of the proposed estimator is evaluated with respect to some existing density estimators assuming some patterns of plant populations. Finally, an example from field data is considered.