Progress 10/01/19 to 09/30/21
Outputs
Target Audience:Farmers, consultants, ag technology providers and extension personnel. Changes/Problems:2019 was a challenging crop production year in Ohio. Late planting coupled with fields not planted did not allow the intended studies to be completed as planned. 2020 and 2021 were challenging as well due to the pandemic with limited flights and data collection during the 2021 growing season. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?
Nothing Reported
How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Ohio State Extension online webinars were used to discuss the UAS technology for scouting crops and for spraying in 2021. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Research is being planned using UASs to scout and apply crop protection products in 2022 and 2023. We are outlining protocols that will be used to in this research along with finalizing cooperating farmers and consultants. In 2022, we will detials the procedures used for identifying weeds and disease in corn using UAS based technology that in return will be used to create a crop protection prescription for upload into a drone sprayer for execution.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
UASs flights collecting RGB and NIR imagery were completed in 2019. However, due to the late planting season, field treatments were not installed since fields were either not planted or planted mid-June. Thus, 2019 was used to adjust our research methodolgy and work on data collection procedures for the 2020 growing season. Data collection did not occur in 2020 due to the pandemic and was limited in 2021, again due to the pandemic.
Publications
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Progress 10/01/19 to 09/30/20
Outputs
Target Audience:Farmers, consultants and agriculture technology companies Changes/Problems:The 2020 pandemic caused for cancellation of planned research over the growing season. However, working with two companies and obtaining approval for field resarch at two sites allowed for some work to be completed and giving a graduate student the ability to adjust 2021 research plans. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Due to the pandemic, I was the only OSU person present for the two flights. However, undergraduate students and a graduate student supported the work remotely allowing them to help with data analyses and working through data file conversions. We were also able to review video collected on the ground and by UAS during the spray drone operation providing insights into limitations and information to be used for resarch being planned in 2021. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The three primary methods to dissemenate results in 2020 were the 2019 eFields Report, video recordings created for the virtual Farm Science Review and presentations during Ohio State winter Extension meetings. First, the 2019 eFields reported was published both in hardcopy and online (https://digitalag.osu.edu/efields) for distribution in Ohio and neighboring states. There were two studies that outlined research we are conducting and results to-date in this report. Two educational videos were created for the virtual Farm Science review that provided detials on the use UAS in agriculture and about spraying with UAS. Finally, results were presented during February at two Ohio Staete University Extension winter meetings. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?For 2021, we plan on obtaining university approval to continue our UAS work. Currently, we are working on approval which will also require approval for working as long as the pandemic lasts. The plan is to setup at least two primary corn production fields where we will continue collecting imagery to evaluate disease and nutrient defiencies while also continuiing our work on predicting yield plus converting imagery into desicions on fungicide applications.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
In 2020, we were only able to fly two times due to pandemic restrictions. The first flight and field application occurred on July 24. A30-acrecorn field was used for this study where imagery was being used to evualute corn status in terms of health and biomass then using this data to create fungicie recommendation to be used by a drone sprayer. RGB and NIR imagery was collected to compute NDVI and estimate biomass across the field. Imagery data collection and processing for the recommendation was completed within two hours. A spray drone was then used to apply the fungicide to the corn. It took1.75 hours to cover the field. The cycle time to fill the tank, replace the batteries, lift off and spray before running out of product was on average 14minutes. Product was sprayed at a rate of 1 GPA with approximately 4 acres covered per cycle. This study was conducted to address objective 2 of this multi-state projectand was not originally planned for the 2020 growing season. However, it provided the opporunity to capture preliminary informationfor collecting imagery and converting into a recommendation for execution by a spray drone. The second flight occurred on August 21 working with a commercial company offering drone spraying services. Again, this was not a planned study but was asked to support allowing us the opportunity to test imagery collection to identify weed patches that in turns gets onverted into a application map indicating weed spots to apply herbicide with a spray drone. A 60-acre soybean field was used for this study with the commercial company and farmer responsible for the spray drone and herbicide products. RGB imagery was collected and processed to identify the presence of giant ragweed in this soybean field. The identified areas were geo-located with this information provided to the drone spray company that used to established the flight plan for the spray drone applying only to areas where giant ragweed was detected. The main goal for this project was understanding the ability to spatially idenitify giant ragweed and converting into a file that could be used by the company for establishing the flight plan for the spray drone. This task was successfully completed while also exposing the need for an improved data flow plan to make the time converting fromgeoreferenced imagesinto a file that could be simply and quickly uploaded for generating a flight plan.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Khanal, S., K.C.Kushal, J.P. Fulton, S.A. Shearer, and E. Ozkan. 2020. Remote sensing in agriculture Accomplishments, limitations, and opportunities. Remote Sensing. 12, 3783
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Matcham, E.G., W.P. Hamman, E.H. Hawkins, J.P. Fulton, S. Subburayalu, and L.E. Lindsey. 2020. Soil and Terrain Properties that Predict Differences in Local Ideal Seeding Rate for Soybean. Agronomy Journal. 112(3): 1981-1991.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2021
Citation:
Khanal, S., A. Klopfenstein, K.C. Kushal, R. Venkatesh, J.P. Fulton, N. Douridas, and S.A. Shearer. (2020). Assessing the impact of agricultural field traffic on corn grain yield using remote sensing and machine learning. Soil & Tillage Research.
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
2019 eFields Report. 2020. Eds. E. Hawkins and J.P. Fulton. College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Columbus, Ohio.
- Type:
Websites
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
https://digitalag.osu.edu/ag-sensing. Website.
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