article_snippet: Mr Bowman, deliberately made mistakes on one test plot by not applying enough nitrogen fertilizer and is now using drones to see if Mr Bowman can reveal potentially weaker crops.
article_snippet: As the crop gets up and going, we'll fly over the crop and see if we can detect those areas sooner than we could visually from the ground,’ he said.
article_snippet: Mr Bowman is using two quadricopters affixed with a Go-Pro camera and a Canon Powershot SX260 camera with a lens for infrared photography to see if infrared photography can spot potential crop trouble.
article_snippet: Standard pictures and video taken with drones can tell us a lot.
article_snippet: But what us're looking to give us even more information is multispectral cameras that can give us imagery in other wavelengths, such as near-infrared, to help us identify areas of crop stress.
article_snippet: It probably isn't going to tell us what the problem is, but the problem will tell us where problems are so that us can target us scouting in those specific areas and determine what might be occurring.
article_snippet: Infrared images will help the researchers identify plants in the farm that appear to be absorbing or reflecting light differently - an indication that plants are under some type of stress, such as pests, disease or nutrient deficiencies.
article_snippet: Before the soybean rows close, or if we get a different spectrum response from some of these weeds as these weeds break through the canopy, we may see some of these weeds show up in the imagery as well to identify where there are hot spots and problems,’ Mr Bowman said.