Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Brief summary of minutes of annual meeting:  

Drs. Maria Balota and Matthew Chappell (Virginia Tech) began the meeting with brief introductions to the meeting agenda and remarks about the facilities at Tidewater Agricultural Research and Extension Center (TAREC). This was followed by remarks from Dr. Randy Raper (Oklahoma State University, virtual), who acknowledged those who made significant contributions to securing an award for this proposal, Dr. Kang Xia (Virginia Tech), who presented an introduction to Virginia Tech’s Center for Advanced Innovation in Agriculture (CAIA) and their goals as a center, and Dr. Steven Thomson (USDA-NIFA), who gave general updates from USDA-NIFA. Afterwards, the group heard from Dr. Seth Murray (Texas A&M University), who presented remarks from Crop Science Society of America (CSSA) and AG2PI program updates.

Just before lunch, each participating university was given the opportunity to share accomplishments and updates from their respective institutions relevant to the project.

University Updates

1. Texas A&M University – Dr. Mahendra Bhandari and Dr. Lee Tarpley
2. North Carolina State University – Dr. Gary Roberson
3. Mississippi State – Dr. Alex Thomasson, Dr. Gray Turnage, and Emma Schultz (sponsored PhD student)
4. Montana State University – Dr. Jennifer Lachowiec
5. Oklahoma State University – Dr. Phil Alderman
6. University of Florida – Dr. Aditya Singh (virtually) and Ayush Kachrulal (sponsored PhD student)
7. Clemson University – Dr. Joe Mari Maja
8. Purdue University – Dr. Dharmendra Saraswat
9. University of Kentucky – Dr. Josh Jackson
10. University of Georgia – Dr. Glen C. Raines
11. Washington State University – Dr. Lav R. Khot
12. South Dakota State University – Dr. Maitiniyazi Maimaitijiang (virtually)

This was followed by guest speakers.

Speakers

Speaker 1: Vijay Singh

Weed management focus including herbicide application with UAV. Considering variables like UAV elevation, herbicide rate, application type (spot v. blanket), previous v. live identification of weeds in the field.

Speaker 2: Cully Hession

LiDAR for assessing floods and floodplains. One goal is estimating a the poorly characterized parameter roughness in hydraulic modeling by using LiDAR. Can examine flood extents and velocity to estimate roughness. Also using UAS for phenotyping the functionally extinct American chestnut. Tree branching shares similarities with river branching for purposes of phenotyping to inform breeding.

Speaker 3: Robin White

UAV for Animal Ag overview. Four main themes for use in animals identified 1) detection and tracking, 2) understanding how animals utilize pasture land, 3) health monitoring, and 4) grazing support. The use of UAS need to provide benefits over the current approaches in regard to improving profitability, improving producer quality of life, and improving animal well-being.

Speaker 4: Abhilash Chandel

sUAS for field cropping systems by developing metrics that are associated with difficult to assess traits. This includes effects of pests, diseases, and below-ground traits. Also considering the idea that crops can have multiple “issues” simultaneously—what are the metrics of those and can they be distinguished?

Afterwards, the group split for a few hours and the sponsored graduate students, post-docs, and professors were given a brief tour of TAREC fields, led by Dr. Chappell, where they met with a Virginia Tech graduate student Baker Alijawasim to hear about an ongoing study with anthracnose in strawberry. Meanwhile, voting members of project S1069 remained in the TAREC auditorium for the business meeting.

Business Meeting

Minutes from the 2022 meeting were reviewed and the style of the 2022 minutes was appreciated.

For the current report, due in 60 days, send the following to Maria Balota:

• publications from May/June 2022-May 2023
• presentations from today as ppt or pdf

Because we won the Multi-state research award, we have $15,000 to spend. Discussion on how to spend these funds included a) travel funding to support early career researchers for the 2024 meeting, b) hiring a grant writer for a large grant on behalf of the group, c) write a textbook (online and dynamic) and hire an illustrator, d) write a review article and fund a post-doc/student for this, and e) write a review and a focused article on GPS calibration. Another idea was that writing the review article first would lay the framework for a grant submission.

The discussion of the grant considered the NSF’s new directorate Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships, known to fund “user-inspired” applications. Discussion of paper writing would require a post-doc with limited funding who would work solely on the article for several months.

Conclusion was to think on the spending choices for a few weeks and see if someone wants to lead the paper. If the paper is not taken on with progress made by the end of 2023, funds will be used to support graduate student travel to the 2024 meeting.

Because the university updates were longer than requested on the agenda, a proposal to standardize them in the future was made. It was proposed that presentations should include no more than two slides, one with summary of activities and the second with the products from these activities. This strategy will help streamline the meeting next year, help with the activity reporting, and identification of S-1069 research impacts.

The 2024 meeting will be held in Bozeman, June 13-14. Large local optics and photonics industry and small grains production will likely be the highlights. The 2024 meeting could include updates from the FAA on UAS rules and interaction with growers using UAS. Potentially, Dr. Bajwa (Montana State) can present the group information on funding from community groups related to precision ag., and bring community groups that have been funded and received previews of tech from industry. A limited number of people could be invited for more in-depth talks on Montana-specific commodities.

At the 2022 meeting, no vice-chair was chosen, but Jennifer Lachowiec was elected secretary. Discussion on the location of the 2025 meeting, highlighted Joshua Jackson hosting the meeting at U of Kentucky. Therefore, a motion was made for the location of the 2025 meeting (Alex Thomasson seconded by Gary Turnage) and unanimously accepted. Maria Balota is chair, Jennifer Lachowiec is vice-chair, and Joshua Jackson is secretary through Sep 2023. Jennifer Lachowiec (Montana State) will then become chair and Joshua Jackson (Univ. of Kentucky) will be vice-chair. Mahendra Bhandari (Texas A&M) was nominated as secretary starting September 2023, a motion was made by Alex Thomason and seconded by Dharmendra, and unanimously accepted by the group.

Accomplishments:

• Training
  • Prepared a UAS manual (Mahendra Bhandari and Lee Tarpley)
  • Conducted a UAS workshop to train Honduras Ministry of Agriculture personnel on UAS data collection, processing, and analysis (February 5-10, 2023)
  • Conducted workshop to train graduate students from wheat breeding programs across the country on UAS data collection, processing and analysis (May 23-25, 2023)
• Development of a web-based user interface for processing and management of the UAS data (Mahendra Bhandari and Seth Murray)
• Development of remote sensing methods for quantifying levels of important traits of the crop vegetation and indices to provide simultaneous, sensitive, and specific crop evaluations (all participating universities).
• Plant Phenomics achievements from Montana to Texas.
• Extension and outreach: Abhilash Chandel organized a workshop with growers in Virginia to discuss their views for the need of drone and remote sensing field activities.
• Drone spraying/spreading & economics: research in Virginia and Washington State had intensified and future collaborations among these universities were formulated.
• Awarded first prize for diversity-related research in understanding barriers to entry for UAS use at the ASA-CSSA-SSSA 2023 Conference.

Impacts:

Working together, in small or large groups, the S-1069 Team made significant progress towards discovery if new aspects of UAS applications in breeding, and agriculture production and natural resources; development of training materials for UAS applications; building platforms for UAS-based data analysis, storage and sharing; and extension and outreach for expansion of UAS-driven agriculture production.

Publications:

1. Kassim, Y.B.; Oteng-Frimpong, R.; Puozaa, D.K.; Sie, E.K.; Abdul Rasheed, M.; Abdul Rashid, I.; Danquah, A.; Akogo, D.A.; Rhoads, J.; Hoisington, D.; Burow, M.D., and Balota, M. 2022. High-Throughput Plant Phenotyping (HTPP) in Resource-Constrained Research Programs: A Working Example in Ghana. Agronomy (MDPI), 12, 2733.
2. Sarkar, S., Oakes, J., Cazenave, A.B., Burow, M.D., Bennett, R.S., Chamberlin, K. D., Wang, N., White, M., Payton, P., Mahan, J., Chagoya, J., Sung, C-J., McCall, D.S., Thomason, T.E., and Balota, M. 2022. Evaluation of the U.S. peanut germplasm mini-core collection in the Virginia-Carolina region using traditional and high-throughput methods. Agronomy (MDPI) 12(8), 1945
3. Chapu, I., Okello, D.K., Okello, R.C.O., Odong, T.L., Sarkar, S., and Balota, M. 2022. Exploration of alternative approaches to phenotyping of late leaf spot and groundnut rosette virus disease for groundnut breeding. Front. Plant Sci., 13: 912332, doi: 10.3389/fpls.2022.912332. (915 views, 7/21/2022).
4. Sie, E.K., Oteng-Frimpong, R., Kassim, Y.B., Puozaa, D.K., Adjebeng-Danquah, J., Masawudu, A.R., Ofori, K., Danquah, A., Cazenave, A.B., Hoisington, D., Rhoads J., and Balota, M. 2022. RGB-image method enables indirect selection for leaf spot resistance and yield estimation in a groundnut breeding program in Western Africa, Front. Plant Sci., 13:901561
5. Molaei, B., A. K. Chandel, R. Troy Peters, R. Khot, A. Khan, F. Maureira, and C. Stockle. 2023. Investigating the application of artificial hot and cold reference surfaces for improved ETc estimation using the UAS-METRIC energy balance model. Agricultural Water Management, 284, 108346. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2023.108346.
6. Chandel, A.K., A.P. Rathnayake, and R. Khot. 2022. Mapping apple canopy attributes using aerial multispectral imagery for precision crop inputs management. Acta Horticulturae. 1346, 537-546, https://10.17660/ActaHortic.2022.1346.68
7. Molaei, B., A. Chandel, R.T. Peters*, R. Khot, and J.Q. Vargas.  2022.  Investigating lodging in Spearmint with overhead sprinklers compared to drag hoses using the texture feature from low altitude RGB imagery. Information Processing in Agriculture, 9(2): 335-341 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inpa.2021.02.003
8. Molaei, B., R.T. Peters*, R. Khot, and C. Stockle. 2022. Assessing suitability of auto-selection of hot and cold anchor pixels of the UAS-metric model for developing crop water use maps. Remote Sensing, 14(18), 4454; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14184454
9. Chandel, A. K., Amogi, B., Khot, L., Stockle, C. O., and R. T. Peters. 2022. Digitizing Crop Water Use with Data-Driven Approaches. Resource Magazine, 29(4), 14--16.
10. Amogi, B., J. Schrader, Khot, and G.-A. Hoheisel. 2023. Decision support tools for frost mitigation. Washington State University – Fruit Matters, March 2023. https://treefruit.wsu.edu/article/frost-mitigation/
11. Sharma, P., Leigh, L., Chang, J., Maimaitijiang, M., & Caffé, M. (2022). Above-ground biomass estimation in oats using UAV remote sensing and machine learning. Sensors, 22(2), 601.
12. Dilmurat, K., Sagan, V., Maimaitijiang, M., Moose, S., & Fritschi, F. B. (2022). Estimating Crop Seed Composition Using Machine Learning from Multisensory UAV Data. Remote Sensing, 14(19), 4786.
13. Maimaitijiang M., Millett, B., Paheding S., Khan SN., Dilmurat K., Reyes A., Kovács P. (2023). Estimating crop grain yield and seed composition using deep learning from UAV multispectral data. 2023 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium IGARSS.
14. Khan SN., Maimaitijiang M., Millett, B., Paheding S., Li DP., Caffé M., Kovács P. (2023). Simultaneously estimating crop yield and seed composition using multitask learning from UAV multispectral data. 2023 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium IGARSS.

Technical Presentations/Abstracts

1. Cann, M. D., B. R. Amogi, S. Gorthi, G. A. Hoheisel, and L. R. Khot. 2022. Observing and Forecasting Near-Surface Temperature Inversions for Effective frost Mitigation in Central WA Perennial Specialty Crops. American Meteorological Society 20^th Conference on Mountain Meteorology, June 27 - July 2, 2022. (Oral Presentation)  https://ams.confex.com/ams/20MOUNTAIN/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/402770 
2. Chandel, A.K., L.R. Khot, V. Blanco, L. Kalcsits, N.E. Kilham, and S. Mantle. 2022. Multi-scale remote sensing data driven water use and stress mapping of apple trees. Paper No. 2201120 (Oral Presentation), ASABE Annual International Meeting 2022, Houston, Texas, USA, July 17-20, 2022.
3. Molaei, B., Peters, R.T., Chandel, A.K., Khot, L.R., Stockle, C.O., 2022. Investigating practical artificial hot and cold reference surfaces for improved ET estimation using UAS-METRIC energy balance model. Paper No. 2200629 (Oral Presentation). ASABE Annual International Meeting 2022, Houston, Texas, USA, July 17-20, 2022 (Awarded as best oral presentation paper).

1. Chandel, A.K., Khot, L.R., Peters, T.R., Stöckle, C.O., Mantle, S., Kalcsits, L., Blanco, V., Kilham, N.E., 2022. Multi-scale remote sensing and energy balance modeling for geospatial evapotranspiration mapping of apple trees. Envisioning 2050 in the Southeast: AI-Driven Innovations in Agriculture. Auburn University, AL, USA, March 9-11, 2022.
2. Amogi, B. R., M. D. Cann, G. S. Kothawade, S. R. Gorthi, K. Yumnam, G.-A. Hoheisel, and L. R. Khot. 2022. Drone based temperature inversion profile mapping for understanding the effectiveness of wind machine-based frost mitigation in fruit crops. Paper No. 2201213, ASABE 2022 Annual International Meeting, Houston, TX, July 17-20, 2022 (Oral Presentation).
3. Schrader, M.J., R. K. Sahni, and L. R. Khot. 2022. Row-aligned vs. cross-row low-altitude aerial spray applications in modern vineyards. Poster presentation, Washington State Grapes Society (WSGS) Annual Meeting, Grandview, WA. November 17-18, 2022. Participants: ~ 75.

Extension Outreach talks

1. (Invited) Talk on “Digital agriculture and drones”, Spokane Ag Expo and Pacific NW Farm Forum, Spokane, WA. February 7, 2023. Time: 60 min. Participants: ~40.
2. Talk and discussion on “Smart orchard learnings from 3 years”, Columbia Basic Tree Fruit Club Meeting, Kennewick, WA. January 24, 2023. Time: 30 min. Participants: ~15.
3. Talk on “Smart orchard: Tools to monitor crop water use”, 76th Annual Lake Chelan Horticultural Meeting, Chelan WA. January 21, 2023. Time: 30 min. Participants: ~95.
4. (Invited) Talk on “Crop protection technologies for modern orchard systems”, New Frontiers Conference on Targeted Solutions in Crop Protection for Sustainable Agriculture, Corteva Campus, Indianapolis, IN. October 13, 2022. Time: 30 min. Participants: 80 (combined in-person & virtual).
5. (Invited) Talk on “Drones & Washington Agriculture”, AUVSI Cascade Symposium on Drones, Droids, and Uncrewed systems, Walla Walla, WA. May 25, 2022. Time: 30 min, Participants: ~55.

Teaching

                BYSE 551: UAS in Ag (2 credits) Spring 2023

Datasets:

Killian, E., Lachowiec, J., Sherman, J., Lutgen G., Eberly, J. 2023. High resolution aerial imagery of barley over a growing season. Dryad, Dataset, https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.bk3j9kdhp