Field experiment in Soybean field with Multispectral Drone

Drones' applications are considered as a part of precision agriculture. A multispectral drone was used in a field experiment in southern Manitoba for evaluation of soybean emergence. Flight mission was conducted using the waypoint and route map option incorporated to the remote-control software of the drone. Eight selected area here called waypoints were selected as well as a strip of 50x100 m within a soybean field for imagery data collection from the crops in V1-4 growth stages. from mid May to mid June 2023. The imagery data was analysed in DJI Terra software and compared with cloud-based software*. Data showed 92% and 75% emergence when each of these approaches was used for analysis of data, respectively. Preliminary results obtained in this study showed how drones can play an important role especially in commercial fields for monitoring emergence early in the growing season.

Fig 1: field experiment in southern Manitoba

Fig 2, DJI Mavic 3 Multispectral to fly over every 2 weeks after seedling

Fig 3, analysis based on multispectral imaging in DJI Terra

Table 1, germination estimation based on 4 waypoints. 8% not emerged.

Fig 4, germination analysis using a cloud based software, 25% not emerged