Farmonaut Precision Farming/Agriculture – 4

PrecisionAg101 Post #4 : These posts are meant to make farmers aware of the basics of precision agriculture and how to interpret various satellite data provided by us.

The field image attached below is of the farmer Paulo o (Ponta Pora – State of Mato Grosso do Sul, 79900-000, Brazil), (Field Area: 47 Hectares). The image displayed on the map is NDRE (Normalized Difference Red Edge) captured by the satellite. NDRE images are used to quantify crop health when the crop is in the later stage of growth. NDVI index is not ideal for the crops in their later stage of growth because in grasses, cereal crops, permanent crops and in certain row crops which are in their later growth stages, chlorophyll content reaches a point at which NDVI reaches a maximum value of 1.0 and hence saturates. Hence, any crop health issue is hard to detect with NDVI until any such problem becomes strong enough to reduce the NDVI value below 1.0. This may happen at a point at which damage has already occurred. By substituting NDVI’s red band with NDRE’s red edge band we can mitigate this issue of saturation discussed above. So, in conclusion, if the crops of observation are permanent or dense, you should use NDRE right away. The colors used to quantify this information is very easy to interpret.

Dark Green/ Green: Crop is very healthy
Yellow: Crop needs attention
Red: Barren land

To cross-verify these results farmers can simply open GPS on their smartphones and can navigate through the field using this image.

By using satellite data provided by us, farmers can:
1. Reduce Chemical/Fertilizer consumption by applying them only in the locations where crop
health is not good.
2. Reduce Labour costs by directing the labours only in those field areas where crop health is
critical.
3. Reduce irrigation water wastage by applying proper irrigation only in those locations where
plant water stress is low.
4. Increase overall yield.

The system is available for use on android, iOS as well as web.

Happy Farming!

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