In Texas, researchers have proven the effective use of unmanned aerial vehicles and sensing technology to more quickly identify and respond to crop diseases and plant stress-related events such as drought. A forty-member Texas A&M AgriLife Research team making up multiple flight teams are working on specific crop issues on a 1,400 acre Texas A&M Farm near College Station using both rotary and fixed-wing UAVs. Cotton root rot is a current target for these in-field studies.
“Our goals of the project are to provide next-day UAV remote-sensing data to the research team,” said Dr. Alex Thomasson. “Cotton root rot tends to stay in the same field areas year after year. By using UAVs, we can pinpoint the areas where cotton root rot is prevalent. You can apply fungicide in that part of the field to lessen the threat rather than having to treat a whole crop and incur unnecessary expense.”