Location: Soil Management and Sugarbeet Research
Project Number: 3012-12210-001-034-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Sep 3, 2025
End Date: Aug 1, 2029
Objective:
Objective 1: Develop cross-site remote sensing capacity and associated data platform to serve as a national data lake combining high-resolution phenotypical and experimental data to accelerate precision agriculture tool development for innovation and farmer implementation.
Objective 2: Establish regional phenotyping network for wheat stem sawly to accelerate innovation around remote sensing of wheat stem sawfly, its impact, and its parasitoids.
Approach:
Objective 1: Collect biweekly, high resolutions multispectral imagery at 3-4 participating locations during 2026 – 2028 growing seasons. The remaining sites will collect their own imagery to contribute to data lake and evaluate this data platform. Locations will collect high resolution landscape and soil data and use autonomous ground vehicles to collect phenotype data. Combine newly collected remote sensing data with data collected by ARS scientists into a single data lake that crosses trials and locations. The remote sensing platform will allow participating locations to access and interrogate data, and download that data for offline analysis and storage. USDA's PDI and SciNet will be engaged to develop data pipelines from this pilot project to ARS computing and knowledge management resources.
Objective 2: Working across USDA's wheat stem sawfly community, evalute alternative approaches to phenotyping wheat stem sawfly presence and impact. As part of this work, use existing trials in Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, and North Dakota to innovate new methods for sawfly detection.