December 2020 - 12

SAVING
TIME
New precision ag project
would help farmers
measure plant moisture
The base robot for the new plant-moisture-measuring system researchers are developing will navigate rows of crops to reach individual leaves and stems. Photos: UC Merced
By Lorena Anderson
University of California, Merced
One of the biggest challenges in
managing crops, especially in large
fields, is knowing how much water each
section of a field needs. Determining
that accurately is a cumbersome process
that requires people to hand-pluck
individual leaves from plants, put them
in pressure chambers and apply air
pressure to see when water begins to
leak from the leaf stems.
That kind of testing is timeconsuming
and means that farmers
can only reach so many areas of a field
each day and cannot test as frequently
as they should.
Computer Science and Engineering
Chair Professor Stefano Carpin,
Environmental Engineering Professor
Joshua Viers and professors
Konstantinos Karydis and Amit K.
Roy-Chowdhury at UC Riverside
recently received a more than $1
million grant from the USDA through
the National Science Foundation's
National Robotics Initiative to address
these challenges.
They are developing a robotic
pressure chamber that can harvest
its own sample leaves and test them
on site, immediately, to provide the
freshest data. The system will work to
gather data even in large fields, and
over a period of time rather than just
providing a snapshot.
Having field data that's updated
frequently can help farmers plan
irrigation frequency and conserve
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December 2020

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