
Drones for plant breeding
Plant breeders can’t speed up how fast a plant grows, which limits how quickly they can develop new varieties. But knowing sooner how a plant is responding to its environment can speed up the process of selecting plants with certain traits and make that work more reliable. In earlier research, the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Peanut used hand-held sensors to evaluate peanut plants in the field, and developed vegetation indices (VIs) that could predict disease resistance, water stress tolerance, and yield better than traditional methods of evaluating plants. Now, researchers are working with drones in four African countries, using similar technology to make selections with less time and manpower, and more accuracy, and can be used in connection with digitized methods of analysis and selection decision tools.