Integrated Proximal Sensing of Soil and Crop

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The ultimate goal of this research program is to advance proximal soil and plant sensing technologies to enable low-cost acquisition of accurate information about spatial and temporal changes in crop growing conditions across a landscape. Proximal sensing systems rely on gathering signals from transducers placed in contact, or less than 2 m away from the target. Knowing and understanding the heterogeneity of soil and plant properties help farmers and other land managers optimize their decision-making process to develop profitable, sustainable, and environmentally friendly operations. During the 2017-2022 period, the emphasis will be placed on integrating several soil sensing techniques in a single, on-the-spot soil analyzer and the development of an optimized methodology for deployment of this system in both piloted and autonomous modes of operation. The minimum integrated package will include: an integrated cartridge of several ion-selective membranes (pH, nitrate, potassium, sodium, etc), digital microscope, spectroscope, soil respiration sensor as well as mechanical resistance and water content sensors. The system will be tested in both mineral and organic soil conditions. The integrated plant sensing platform will be extended to combine multispectral, ultrasonic and thermal measurements with low-grade laser scanning and digital imagery components. This platform will serve as the basic crop phenotyping unit; it will be tested on commodity crops (corn and soybean) as well as forage and vegetable crops. Finally, a cloud-based geospatial data analytic tool will be developed to blend proximal sensing data obtained using systems being developed with conventional high-density data layers, such as field topography, apparent soil electrical conductivity, yield maps, satellite and low-altitude imagery, etc. The neighborhood search clustering process will be used to increase the value of information obtained by minimizing the cost and maximizing the accuracy of targeted thematic maps revealing spatially variable soil productivity and potential crop stress assessments. The program will engage at least six HQPs over the next five years. The results will be disseminated within the precision agriculture scientific community, relevant agribusinesses and service providers as well as crop producer associations.