Status of drone use in and remote sensing of crops
As we all know, the face of agriculture is changing by the day. And one of the reasons is the use of UAV [unmanned aerial vehicles] devices such as drones to remotely sense changes in a crop and its growing environment so that management decisions can be made quicker and more efficiently. The following articles provide details about how UAV’s/drones can be used in agricultural settings.
Using Drones in Agriculture and Natural Resources [USDA-NIFA]
Harnessing the power of drones for improved efficiency and data collection [USDA-NRCS]
How drones are used in agriculture [TOLL]
4 Ways drones are used in agriculture [Nebraska Corn Board]
• Research-based policies and a clearer process to standardize operator training have and will continue to increase the adoption and use of drones for agricultural purposes.
• Results from studies where drones are used to apply agricultural chemicals show that they exhibit similar drift patterns as ground-based equipment.
• Drones are especially useful for applying materials on fields that are uneven and/or have uneven terrain.
• Drones can apply agricultural materials on sites that are too wet for ground rigs to traverse.
• Innovations in LIDAR [LIght Detection And Ranging] technology and 3D multispectral imaging have expanded the usefulness of drones in agriculture.
• Remote sensing with drones offers a way to monitor plant health.
• Scientists in several states have collaborated to increase the adoption of drones for remote sensing and precise management of crop stressors.
• Drones can be used to apply targeted treatments to crops that include soybeans.
• Several states have compiled fact sheets to help crop producers understand regulations and licensing requirements for drone use.
• Drones can be used to efficiently collect large amounts of data that can be analyzed to guide better decision making.
• Drones can assess crop performance and stressors over a large area in a fraction of the time that would be required by traditional methods.
• When a disaster occurs, drones can quickly assess damage to crops.
• The integration of drones into crop production/management research will improve efficiency and data collection.
• Traditional methods vs. using drones for data collection and management are expensive, time-consuming, often environmentally harmful, and subject to differences in human interpretation.
• Drones offer the opportunity to streamline agricultural work by taking the burden from the producer and placing it in the hands of a qualified drone business.
• Drones have a place in the increasing use of precision agriculture that uses new technologies to detect and record variations in plant health and stressor presence.
• The use of drones in agriculture can lesssen the labor used for traditional purposes such as scouting.
• Drones can easily access almost any agricultural site without disturbing the surveyed crop.
• As drone technology advances, the overall quality of the data they collect will increase.
• Use of drones can allow agricultural producers to reduce their impact on the crop’s growing environment.
• Flying a drone requires FAA certification based on how the drone is being used, and pilot training.
• Increasing the payload capacity of drones will likely increase their use in agricultural settings.
An article titled A brief history of remote sensing of soybean by Dr. Joby Czarnecki et al. provides information about the advancement of tools that can be used for remote sensing of soybean issues. Some major points in the article follow.
• The last 20 years have been a period of advancement in the remote sensing tools that are available for the study and understanding of soybean issues.
• Today’s students and researchers can access data from imagery archives of satellites that have near-daily visitation cycles.
• Artificial intelligence [AI] has given researchers improved capacity to analyze data.
• Researchers have used remote sensing to provide information on biophysical parameters that contribute to seed yield.
• Remote sensing is a valuable tool for classifying genotypes/breeding lines that are either tolerant or sensitive to factors that affect seed yield.
• UAV-collected data provide a more precise depiction of plant health and stress responses than that provided by traditional visual-rating methods.
• Information collected by remote sensing has been instrumental in creating models that can 1) predict yield, and 2) be used to select high-yielding soybean lines for a given set of environmental conditions.
• Use of sensors to detect weeds in soybean fields has been done, but is hampered by the 1) difficulty in differentiating between/among weed species that are small, and 2) battery life of drones used for scouting large fields.
• Remote sensing has been used extensively to detect off-target application of herbicides such as glyphosate, and the effects of such off-site movement.
• Remote sensing to detect and categorize stress caused by insect infestations has not been totally successful.
• Remote sensing has been used for foliar disease detection in soybean, but the manifestation of some diseases in non-canopy structures such as stems and roots is not sensed by aerial imagery.
• Many researchers rely on physical soil sampling in lieu of remote sensing to determine fertility needs of a soybean production site. However, deficiencies of some nutrients have the potential to be detected by remote sensing.
• Challenges to the use of remote sensing of soybeans are contained in the final sections of the article.
The Miss. Dept. of Agric. & Commerce is the agency that is responsible for regulating pesticides and pesticide applicators in Mississippi. For drone applications in the state, access the MDAC Drone FAQ UAV Pesticide Application portion of the website where the Fact Sheet titled Pesticide application using UAV’s: What you need to know is located. This Fact Sheet provides information about who to contact regarding applications of pesticides, seed, and fertilizers using drones in Mississippi.
Click here and here for articles that provide additional information about drone/UAV technology and development.
Composed by Larry G. Heatherly, July 2025, larryh91746@gmail.com