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BACKGROUND Some maize post-emergence herbicides obtain their crop/weed se- lectivity only through the use of chemical crop safeners. Safeners improve the tolerance of maize to herbicidal active ingredients. In order to investigate the crop response to (cypro- sulfamide) spray application and seed treatment, greenhouse and field trials were con- ducted on three maize development stages (2-, 4-, and 6-leaf stage). Visual estimations on crop vitality were compared to ground-based and airborne hyperspectral and multispectral sensors. RESULTS The reduction of cyprosulfamide by 88% when applied as seed treatment did not significantly reduce maize biomass yields at the field. The crop deterioration in both trials was stronger in the cyprosulfamide seed treatments compared to the spray ap- plications but was found to be transient in the field trial. The hyperspectral sensor and multispectral camera data was correlated with R2 = 0.84 (CropSpec vegetation index) and R2 = 0.64 (Green Normalized Difference Vegetation Index). CONCLUSION The sensor-based collection of crop responses to treatments enables early, quantifiable and auditor-independent assessments. In particular, the airborne multi- spectral imagery assessment of field experiments provides more detailed and comprehen- sive information than visually collected data. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.