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| Bobby Vick of PrecisionHawk lands a drone. (Wilson Times photo by Drew Wilson) |
North Carolina State University student Joshua Henry is collaborating with the North Carolina Cooperative Extension office, and drone company PrecisionHawk to gather information about diseased tobacco plants interspersed with healthy plants over an acre on Vick Family Farms.
"We are looking at nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium deficiencies as well as magnesium and sulfur deficiencies and boron toxicity," Henry told Wilson. Henry, a doctoral student in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, placed about 50 plants with each disorder--300 total--among healthy tobacco plants for a total of 600 plants.
Examining so many plants is a tall order, but the drones can fly over a search pattern grid and gather a great deal of information quickly with remote sensors. And humans don't need much expertise in flying them. Bobby Vick, whose parents own Vick Family Farms, is a solutions engineer for PrecisionHawk and said: "All you have to do is tell the drone where to go . . . The software is telling the drone what positions to go to and what altitude and speed to fly. The drone actually flies itself. Any one of us out here could fly these drones in five minutes time and feel comfortable doing it. It’s not a hard process to learn."
Each nutrition deficiency creates a unique light signature; since the drones' remote sensors collect 270 narrow bands of light, they can pinpoint which disease a tobacco plant has. Henry hopes drones, which can cost as little as $1,500, can help farmers develop better fertilization plans. Linwood Vick of Vick Family Farms agreed: "I think it’s always good to be looking ahead and not getting stuck in the past, so we are looking to do new things and new technology."
from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2lpxMA4 Ag project uses drones to pinpoint diseased tobacco plants - Entrepreneur Generations
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