INTELLIGENT MONITORING OF DISEASED PLANTS USING DRONES

Plant diseases are one of the grand challenges that face the agriculture sector world-wide. In the United States, crop diseases cause losses of one-third of crop production annually. Despite the importance, crop disease diagnosis is challenging for limited-resources farmers if performed through optical observation of plant leaves` symptoms. Therefore, there is an urgent need for markedly improved detection, monitoring, and prediction of crop diseases to reduce crop agriculture losses. Advanced imaging technologies can detect such changes, and can, therefore, be used as noninvasive crop monitoring methods. Furthermore, novel methods of treatment precision application are required. Both sensing and actuation technologies can be mounted on equipment moving through fields (e.g., irrigation equipment), on (un)manned driving vehicles, and on small drones