Two years ago, we purchased a drone outfitted with a multispectral camera, and postdoc Filipe Matias collected the first set of aerial images of our breeding trials. To expedite analysis of the images, Matias developed the software FIELDimageR, and our manuscript was voted paper of the year in the Plant Phenome Journal!
For the 2021 season, the baton was passed from Matias to Chelang’at Sitonik, a first year PhD student, who is pictured here flying our drone at the Hancock Research Station.
Besides taking pretty pictures, we are using the drone to more precisely quantify the rate of canopy closure, as well as leaf maturity (senescence) at the end of the growing season.
