Raptor collecting sugar data on a day that precludes collection of satellite imagery
In what is a world first, the University of New England’s Precision Agriculture Research Group has completed testing the active optical sensor ‘Raptor’ over a field of sugar cane.
Attached underneath a low-flying aircraft, the Raptor enables rapid scanning of crop biomass over entire paddocks. The sensor works by directing rapid pulses of red and near-infrared light onto the crop plants and measuring the light reflected back to the aircraft.
“The relative reflectance of plants in these two wavelengths is an excellent indicator of plant vigour – be it in terms of actual biomass, or water or nutrient status,” said the project leader, Professor David Lamb.
The Raptor system was developed by Kyle Holland of Holland Scientific, based in Nebraska in the United States, to address key limitations in the traditional methods of using satellite or aerial imagery to map crop vigour; the biggest of these being the difficulty in getting imagery when you actually need it. “As it uses its own light sources, the Raptor system is able to capture data under cloud and even at night. Conventional aerial or satellite imagery can only be obtained on clear days, and this can be a real problem during peak cane growing seasons.” Professor Lamb said.
A test flight was conducted over sugarcane in early November 2010, near Maclean in NE NSW. The aim was to test whether the sensor could cope with the large biomass levels we see in cane fields- especially mature ones. The Raptor Sensor detected plenty of spatial variability in the fields and the observed variability in cane vigour was consistent with that mapped using a satellite image collected earlier in the growing season. The Raptor Sensor will continue to be evaluated in joint Qld DEEDI/CSIRO trials, funded by the Sugar Research and Development Corporation, in the Bundaberg region