Scouting for Trouble: Using Drone Imagery Can Help Locate and Possibly Identify Soybean Issues

Drone images taken on August 7 (Mid growing season)

SCOUTING FOR TROUBLE:

USING DRONE IMAGERY CAN HELP LOCATE AND POSSIBLY IDENTIFY SOYBEAN ISSUES

By Carol Brown

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, are now used for many things—from searching for missing livestock to delivering a package —and now crop scouting in South Dakota soybean fields can be added to the list.

David Clay, a distinguished soil science professor at South Dakota State University, is using UAVs in his research funded by the South Dakota Soybean Research and Promotion Council.

“Last year, we monitored about 60 fields three times a year for soybean farmers across the state,” says Clay. “We use the information collected from the drone to demonstrate how this technology can help a farmer scout their field to find problem areas. In the past, our UAV images did a good job of identifying where problem areas were but not what the problem was.”

With the newly purchased sensor, this season Clay hopes the higher quality scans from the drone can tell him more about what those plant stressors are. They will be flying the drone in fields with known problems and using those collected images to verify similar problems at other sites.

“We want to look at the sensor information where we know what the problems are to see specific spectral imagery bands and learn whether those spectral bands hold across a number of sites,” Clay says.

Learning to identify and understand spectral images can help improve crop scouting immensely in the future. Clay is expecting these images can tell them more about particular field stressors.

In addition to this enhanced drone work, they will continue to scout private fields for issues of concern for farmers. Clay’s graduate students visit the farms, fly the drone over the field of interest, collect images, and analyze the data — three times per season. They look for things such as places where an herbicide did not perform, plant disease symptoms, or in-field research plot comparisons.

“The drone can hone in on the field location where the issues are, making field scouting more efficient,” says Clay. “We show the data to the farmer and also compare the images to their yield monitor so they can see how the drone image data can help them in the future.”

Different bands provide different information about the stress that the plant is experiencing. Healthy plants have high reflectance of near infrared light. Unhealthy plants have

Clay sees that when low reflectance. using drone images, crop scouting will become easier, especially for those producers with large fields. The UAV can fly the entire field much quicker than it can be walked, so problems can be spotted sooner, which makes for better, more accurate management decisions as well as precision applications, saving the farmer time and money.

For more information about Clay’s research, visit sdsoybean.org.

For information about the research project, go to the National Soybean Checkoff Research Database.

WEB RESOURCE:

David Clay research on UAV usage; soybeanresearchdata.com/Project.aspx?id=54153

Johnson Farms Field Day

July 7th, 2021 Frankfort, SD Starts 9:30 a.m.

Tour Johnson Farms, 2019 SD Leopold Conservation Award and 2020 NCBA Region 7 Environmental Stewardship Award winning operation!

Topics and Demonstrations:

• New tree planting in pasture strips • Calving pasture with covers and water layout • Beans in rye with grazing and rotation history • Grass (CRP) waterways • Alfalfa/grass seeding with oats nurse crop along with CRP • Corn and soybeans seeded into wheat stubble with 2020 manure application • Wheat field with forage barley in saline areas followed by cover crop • Rainfall and wind simulators • No-till gardening • Opportunity for conversation, questions, and comments by a few speakers/sponsors

FREE ADMISSION

Coffee and rolls served in the morning. Lunch served on the farm. Please RSVP at tinyurl.com/JohnsonTour2021 for meal counts and to receive directions to the farm.

Persons requiring special accommodations or materials in an alternate format or language please contact Cindy Zenk at 605-280-4190 or sdsoilhealth@gmail.com two days prior to the event. The USDA is an equal opportunity provider, employer and lender.