Location: Commodity Protection and Quality Research
Project Number: 2034-43000-043-003-A
Project Type: Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jun 1, 2020
End Date: Mar 31, 2021
Objective:
Provides entomological support for engineering advancements in unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) provided by collaborators M3 for the purpose of: A) determination of optimal release height and swath width, and B) of assessment of the viability of drones for releasing sterile navel orangeworm.
Approach:
Assess trap liners, identify wild and irradiated NOW, and help train machine learning systems in conjunction with these activities:
A) Provide field and laboratory support grids of navel orangeworm phermone traps to evaluate experiments by collaborator M3 with swarm technology (the ability to simultaneously release from three drones at three altitudes). Grids of tens of pheromone traps spaced evenly over 160-640 acres will be monitored following release of sterile NOW from drones; and wild and sterile (released) NOW will be counted and distinguished in the laboratory. The overall goal is to minimize variation due to environmental variables (wind speed, temperature, and relative humidity) to determine optimum height and swath width for UAS and compare to currently-used manned aircraft.
