News on Drones and Agricultural Sensors from Northern America

Enabled by AT&T’s nationwide, highly secure LTE-M cellular network, the Soiltech Sensor precisely records and transmits data for soil moisture, temperature, humidity, location and impacts that may create bruising while crops are being grown, transported, and stored.

A growing number of Prince Edward Island potato farms are taking advantage of new technology to improve their use of crop protectants, including fungicides used to prevent late blight.

Kicking off the 12th annual Potato Expo, held Jan 14-15 in Las Vegas, the National Potato Council announced the launch of its new podcast, 'Eye on Potatoes'. The podcast in available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts.

Scientists have developed a user-friendly online tool called Uniqprimer, which quickly and automatically designs species-specific DNA tags (also known as primers) for detecting pathogens such as Dickeya dianthicola using DNA testing.

Ahmad Al-Mallahi, working at Dalhousie University since October as the McCain Research Chair and assistant professor in the Department of Engineering, is working on sensors and automation to make potato farming smarter.

Researchers with the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture will lead a new DARPA program of $7.5 million to use potato plants as a new, revolutionary sensor platform to detect environmental threats to deployed troops and civilians.

The problem for North Carolina’s sweet potato farmers is knowing whether the drenching rains unleashed by hurricane Florence will have the same effect as being inundated by a flooded pond or creek. Some sweet potato fields received as much as 30 inches.

Resson, a predictive analytics company for the agricultural industry, welcomed Mahindra & Mahindra as a strategic partner, joining existing strategic partners, which include McCain Foods and Monsanto Growth Ventures.

Potato cultivation has a number of quirks that make it both a prime candidate for precision agriculture and a little different than other crops

A five year research project to develop precision agriculture ('smart') technologies for the use of inputs in potato farming at the University of Prince Edward Island's School of Sustainable Design Engineering received support from NSERC

Dirk Hays,Texas A&M AgriLife Research plant geneticist: “With Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), we can image the size of the tubers and get a correlation to the actual physical size of the potato without harvesting them. Potatoes are a dream for Ground Penetrating Radar.”

El boletín ICT Update en su edición de abril de 2016 ofrece 15 articulos sobre drones en la agricultura.

Idaho State University researchers have found high-tech cameras mounted on drones flying 60 meters above potato fields can effectively detect individual diseased and stressed plants.

The provincial government of New Brunswick is investing $5 million in a research and development project at McCain Foods (Canada) which will see the company work with small and medium-sized businesses and researchers from New Brunswick to pursue process improvement, product development and soil remediation initiatives.

Agricultural researchers of the Oregon State University will begin testing two small, remote-controlled aircraft this month, flying them over potato fields in the Hermiston area in trials that may help farmers use water, fertilizer and pesticides more ...