BATON ROUGE, La. ― LSU AgCenter researchers are examining the possibility of using unmanned drones to help farmers monitor their crops from the air.
“The technology appears to be promising,” says AgCenter engineer Randy Price.
Price says a drone was used recently to check freeze damage in a sugarcane field by taking aerial photographs.
He says the AgCenter hopes to send a drone equipped with a sensor to measure crop growth. The device measures the growth of a plant, providing indications of whether more fertilizer is needed on specific areas of a field.
Jimmy Flanagan, LSU AgCenter county agent in St. Mary Parish, is learning to use a helicopter drone to fly over sugarcane fields to determine if adequate fertilizer has been applied.
Flanagan says the drone would be useful in maturing fields of sugarcane and corn where it is difficult to scout tall crops for disease and insufficient fertilizer.
Flanagan says radio-controlled airplanes are available. “The ’copter is good for certain things, but the fixed wing is faster for covering larger acreage.”
