In addition to the activities related to the ECOWHEATALY project, Dr. Francelino Rodrigues, PhD, will hold a webinar entitled “Remote Sensing for Ag development: from plot towards landscape scales” on 24 June, at 11:30 a.m. and will last for about half an hour.
Dr. Francelino Rodrigues is a Senior Scientist, expert in Digital Agriculture, Geospatial project management, Remote Sensing, Precision Agriculture, Decision Support Systems and High-throughput field phenotyping.
ABSTRACT:
Precision Agriculture (PA) and especially Remote Sensing (RS) technologies have become more affordable and popular in recent years. Cameras have become more compact and lighter, with improved spectral and spatial resolutions. The use of incoming light sensors allows for images to be automatically calibrated to surface reflectance on the fly, while the image processing software keeps getting faster and increasingly user-friendly. This progress has promoted a lot of advancements in the application of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to agricultural research, for instance within the plant breeding industry for high throughput field phenotyping. Similarly, open access satellite systems such as Sentinel-1 and 2, as well as those of private companies (e.g. Planet) make it now possible to use their data streams to regularly monitor crops and develop decision support tools for crop management. UAV and satellite based remote sensing technologies have been increasingly used in agricultural research at different scales, from experimental plots on research stations to farmers’ fields and regional scales, and brings important synergies between both systems – often ignored. A few examples of R4D using RS technologies at different spatio-temporal scales for agricultural research, development of decision support systems for farmers and its business model are going to be presented aiming comments and discussion.