Abstract:

Nowadays the use of drones and satellites equipped with Vis and NIR cameras and hyperspectral imaging are becoming essential tools for Ag professionals and researchers in agronomy to manage crop health and productivity. In the last decade, the popularization of smartphones and the consequent increase of affordability of this technology has allowed the mainstream use of applications based on image capture and geo-localization among other technologies in both research and agronomical industry. Regrettably, although affordable or free apps allow the use of plant identification, leaf/canopy measure, disease mapping and fertilization calculation tool there is a lack of information and availability of this kind innovative tools in the academic program of Agronomical engineering, and students are not introduced to this type of technology. The proposed aim of this work is that the students learn about these technologies through research activities at the beginning of their careers. As a first step to prepare students to cope with those advances in technological tools we decided to prepare an introductory theoretical session to this kind of applications and later, take advantage of practical sessions to show some practical uses of this technology. With this aim we acquired a thermal camera attached to a smartphone to acquire thermal images of plants in an experiment using well nourished plants and groups of plants under deficit of some macro or micro elements. In this practical session students have to characterize the anatomical and physiological consequences of each deficiency by measuring growth parameters and acquiring images of characteristic lesions with their phones. On top of that we used thermal imaging to assess differences in leaf temperature that would be associated with nutrient deficiency in the field as an non destructive and fast method to assess the health of a commercial crop.

Keywords:

App, phenotyping, agronomy.