UAVs becoming new farming tool

STARKVILLE – It’s hard to compare Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machines, unless you’re Dr. Robert Moorhead, director of Mississippi State University’s Geosystems Research Institute. “The plant is the patient, the agronomists are the doctors and I am the guy that works on the MRI machine,” he explained. UAVs are the newest instrument being used in the prescription of precision agriculture. He’s also the Billie J. Ball Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at MSU’s Bagley College of Engineering. MSU holds certificates of authorization from the FAA to operate UAVs for research purposes only. Scientists here at the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station have been using UAVs in their agricultural investigations. UAVs have only been approved to date for commercial use in a limited capacity in the Arctic. FAA is developing regulations for their commercial use and tentatively plans to issue them in September 2015. GRI colleagues are working with agronomists to incorporate the use of UAVs in site-specific agricultural research. MSU scientists are using them in the research of plant growth, nutrient management, irrigation and herbicide application. (Source: Mississippi Business Journal 08/06/14)