The municipality of Niksic is a rich area for agricultural production. With that in mind, IEC Tehnopolis, using innovative technologies, and recognizing the need of agricultural producers to monitor and analyze the growth of vegetation in a certain period, provided support for 10 of them in the municipality of Niksic.
In this way, we came to the data that indicated to agricultural producers the potential problems during the growth of the analyzed vegetation. This type of crop condition analysis has numerous benefits, but most importantly it represents:
- fast and precise agriculture,
- modern and fast crop control and
- efficient monitoring of the process of vegetation progress and crop quality of crops.
The process of vegetation progress and crop quality is monitored by the Parrot Bluegrass Fileds drone, which provides the ability to map and analyze crops, and is available to the Biotechnology Laboratory, BioLab Tehnopolis. The drone is part of the resources of our FILA innovative laboratory equipped within the project “Strengthening and improving the cross-border innovation network through laboratories for fertilization and innovation in agri-food to strengthen the link between research and small and medium enterprises.“
What is a Parrot Bluegrass Fields drone?
The Parrot Bluegrass Fileds drone is equipped with two sensors, the RBG and the Parrot Sequoia. The RBG sensor can record HD video and high-quality photos and is used for easier visual inspection of crops planted on site. Sequoia is a set of four sensors that take photos in four bands: green, red, red edge, and near-infrared (NIR). By software processing of the obtained photographs in the mentioned 4 ranges, maps with different vegetative indices of the desired locality can be created. They represent a measure of the health of vegetation based on how plants reflect radiation of certain wavelengths. By analyzing the NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) maps created by the drone, it is easy to localize areas where vegetation is less advanced.
After each overflight, the data processing in the form of index maps for crop performance analysis is obtained by software processing of the collected crop data, using the Pix4Dfields program. The results of this monitoring showed and timely located potential problems, which will help farmers to react quickly and consider solutions to improve quality and prevent loss of yield.
In three months, three flights were made for each agricultural producer, by the vegetation cycle of the monitored crop. After checking the defined localities, agricultural producers received a detailed report based on which they could monitor the development of their crops at different stages.
