Location: Plant Physiology and Genetics Research
Project Number: 2020-21000-014-021-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Apr 15, 2026
End Date: Oct 14, 2027
Objective:
The overall goal of the project is to develop drone imaging pipeline and apply it for multi and hyper-spectral imaging in cotton research.
Approach:
The Cooperator and ARS PI and Co-PI will collaborate on research activities and will develop an end-to-end drone imaging pipeline for cotton that spans flight planning, image acquisition, preprocessing, product generation, and agronomic interpretation. Repeated UAS missions equipped with multi-and hyper-spectral and thermal sensors will be conducted over cotton fields under standardized flight altitude, overlap, and time-of-day conditions to ensure radiometric consistency and minimize thermal noise. Raw imagery will be processed through calibration, image alignment, orthomosaic generation, and georeferencing workflows to produce field-scale maps of reflectance, vegetation indices, and canopy temperature. These products will then be integrated with ground measurements, including leaf pigments, canopy temperature sensors, soil moisture, and crop observations, to calibrate and validate retrieval accuracy and derive stress indicators linked to crop water status and vegetation condition.