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Abstract. Thermal infrared imaging has made fast, non-intrusive and remote water stress detection possible for plants. In this study, maize were planted in the field, and were applied with three different water treatment, which were normal, low and very low irrigation. Both RGB camera and thermal infrared camera were mounted on the moving platform, together with an artificial wet reference, a dry leaf reference and an oxide black aluminum plate, which was used as a blackbody for the thermal infrared camera. Besides RGB image, thermal infrared information for maize plant, two references and aluminum plate were obtained at the same time by capturing one image including all these four objects. Based on the extracted sunlit point temperature, and the corresponding reference temperature, crop water stress index (CWSI) was calculated. For each measured maize plant, 20cm depth soil water content was measured. The result shows that there is a good correlation relationship between soil water content and CWSI calculated based on thermal image, which can be used to do fast and non-destructive water stress status detection of maize.