The Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) has joined with the University of Western Australia (UWA) to test the use of drones in detecting crop pests.
Leader of the Grains Science Partnership project, DPIRD Entomologist, Dustin Severtson (pictured) said the technology was in its infancy and was still being adapted to the grains industry.
Dr Severtson said the project had acquired two of the latest high-tech cameras from the United States and China that were fitted to drones to live-stream footage of plant health as they flew over the crop.
“The drones are fitted with normalised difference vegetation index, or NDVI, technology that provides a live video stream of crop damage,” Dr Severtson said.
“It uses the red and near-infrared part of the light spectrum to show leaf stress not seen by the naked eye.”
He said the drones would be in action in coming months, as crop emergence unfolds through to spring when the weather warms up.
“The project will start by flying over cereal and canola crops in the central agricultural region in an attempt to pick up hotspots of pest infestation such as aphids,” Dr Severtson said.
He said the research team was collaborating with chief remote pilot and drone remote sensing researcher, Nik Callow and precision agriculture/agronomy scientist, Ken Flower, both from UWA, to refine the use of the technology and apply the data.
Dr Severtson said the drones and imaging technology provided a means to monitor crops on increasingly large grain properties so growers could optimise their pest scouting strategies.
