Plant Scientist Uses UAVs for Agricultural Research

North Dakota State University (NDSU) Department of Plant Sciences research scientist Dr. Felipe Matias is part of a multi-state research group awarded a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture grant to study the use of unoccupied aerial vehicles (UAVs) for genome to phenome agricultural production research.

The Agricultural Genome to Phenome Initiative (AG2PI) is a three-year grant with the goal of connecting interdisciplinary crop and livestock scientists researching the effects of genotype and environmental influences on important agricultural phenotypes. Short-term (six months to a year) seed grants to identify research needs and sharing opportunities are awarded each year of the grant, in three rounds. The research team including Matias received a first year seed grant titled “Empowering High-Throughput Phenotyping using Unoccupied Aerial Vehicles”.

The research team working with Matias includes Max Feldman of the USDA-Agricultural Research Service in Prosser, WA, Jennifer Lachowiec of Montana State University and David LeBauer of the University of Arizona. Their goals are creating a community of researchers to develop software and pipelines for gathering data, learning UAV operating procedures and creating communication tools such as websites.   

More information https://www.ag2pi.org/