Description: Leveraging UAV imagery holds enormous promise as a tool for both grower-scale evaluations as well as for small plot research. To date, the use of this technology has been limited by disjointed hardware and software systems as well as challenges in industry standardization and adoption. The use of standardized, automated data collection and analysis tools will be discussed. By integrating systematic methods to acquire repeated UAV measurements across an entire research program, a more detailed and statistically rigorous evaluation of product responses is possible. The scalability and objectivity of UAV-based metrics enables a temporal understanding of crop dynamics from planting to harvest, allowing agronomists to better understand what factors drive final yield outcomes.

Why it Matters to the Seed Industry: Accurate, objective data collection in real-time has been a pain point for the Ag research industry. Automated data capture from aerial imagery as well as other sensors and ground observations is essential to understand temporal crop responses and unlock product performance. This is especially important when evaluating next generation products that have unique modes of action. aerialPLOT allows companies to give growers more validation data and a better understanding of expected outcomes in a variety of environments.