Pest and disease aircraft detection is particularly challenging when managing crops that extend for 100s or 1000s of acres. More efficient, targeted and accurate monitoring over such vast distances offers enormous benefits in terms of monitoring and early detection of pests and selection of resistant varieties or hybrids. 

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Current projects investigate the application of small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) to detect and monitor high-priority, in-field plant biosecurity threats and using remote sensing to phenotype plants resistant to key pests affecting major crops in Kansas.

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By combining modern digital photography and sensors with sUASs, agricultural producers and consultants will have the capacity to detect pest insects and diseases before outbreaks occur. The technology is applicable across scales (plant-field-region), can monitor across a range of host plants (e.g. wheat, sorghum, corn, soybean, etc.) and in diverse environments. Targets pests have included sorghum aphid, Hessian fly, soybean defoliators and were used to develop a generalized decision matrix to direct biosecurity surveillance programs to better predict the likelihood of pest presence and potential areas for surveillance. Current research areas also incorporate machine learning to modernize sampling and detection efforts for pests (Grijalva et al. 2022) and beneficial organisms (Spiesman et al. 2021).

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The cost of surveillance over wide areas of both production and natural systems is substantial and is often required to maintain market access (management) or detect new incursions. The future of effective and efficient biosecurity surveillance programs and pest management in general, will require a higher level of automation and technical sophistication and an increased dependence on affordable technologies like small UAS. Reliable yet effective sampling efforts are imperative to the future of plant biosecurity and food security in general. Through better understanding of this technology and acceptance of its application, this tool will contribute to our ability to survey large areas, and those that are inaccessible, more effectively. 

 

For more information about UAS, download the sUAS publication from the KSRE bookstore (#MF3425) or visit www.uask.info