Chemical wastage in agriculture is a global issue. With the introduction of new technology, we can now use drones to help reduce it. By capturing multispectral maps of an area in order to detect differences in plant health, variable rate prescription maps can be made to spray or spread exact amounts of the required product, only where it's needed. Here's how it works:
(Taken from Multispectral Crop Analysis). Our DJI Mavic 3 Enterprise drone is equipped with a multispectral camera that helps assess crop health by capturing images across multiple wavelengths of light. The camera captures data in 4 spectral bands, those being red, green, blue, and near-infrared (NIR) wavelengths. Each band provides different information about plant health.
By analysing the data from these bands, specific indices like the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) can be calculated. NDVI helps distinguish healthy and stressed plants by measuring how much light is absorbed by chlorophyll, and how much is reflected in the NIR range. Healthy plants absorb more red light and reflect more NIR light, while stressed plants (due to lack of moisture, disease, or nutrient deficiency) may reflect more red light & reflect less NIR light. This difference in reflectance can indicate dry/wet areas, crop health, or weed infestation.
Using this data captured with the multispectral mapping drone, variable rate prescription maps can be formulated for our sprayer/spreader drone to apply product at higher rates where it's needed more, and vice versa with lower rates where it's needed less. This results in more practical application, not only boosting crop health accordingly, but also minimising wastage.
