Southeast Missouri State University student publication

Department of Agriculture adds drone for use in curriculum this fall

Friday, August 22, 2014
Morgan Riley with the new agriculture drone.

The agriculture department on Southeast Missouri State University's campus will add an aerial drone to its farming curriculum this fall.

A decision was made earlier this spring by professors within the department to add the new technology to classes so that students have the opportunity to get more hands-on learning experience before they graduate.

Dr. Mike T. Aide, the department chair for the Department of Agriculture, said that the drone will be a beneficial addition to the curriculum for students and teachers.

"This and other technologies that we acquire that are emerging technologies that are vital for our students to be aware of and to have some competency in improves their career performance when they graduate," Aide said.

The drone is able to fly up to 400 feet in the air and can fly as far as the person operating it can see it. The camera is located on the bottom and can pivot in any direction and is programmed to take a picture of the fields every five seconds of flight.

Aide said the drone will be able to take high definition pictures that will allow students and teachers to get in-depth information about the crops, for instance the amount of nitrogen in a plant based on the intensity of its green color. The drone mainly will be used to judge the nutrient status, disease status and insect status of crops.

"We can program in its travel path or we can do it remotely ourselves. And we generally fly a route over a production field and it'll make stops, it can take photos, and it can send the photos back to our computer," Aide said. "We generally take a photo every five seconds. And we can zoom in, we can get high detail on pieces of the plant to see if there's insects or diseases developing."

Aide said that there will be a learning curve when it comes to furthering students' education about how the drone works and how it should be properly operated since they have already been taught some information about it in previous classes.

"A lot of the technology is already being taught, now they actually get examples of the photos that they can play with, things like that," Aide said.

Aide said that Dr. Indi Braden will teach courses in remote sensing and precision agriculture this fall and will be the initial faculty member to utilize the drone's new technology alongside students.

Braden will be the main instructor when it comes to teaching the rest of the faculty about the drone since she was taught how to use it directly by the company who initially created the technology. She will begin teaching the rest of the department's professors in the next couple of weeks so that students being taught throughout the department will be able to utilize the technology in their classes.

Morgan Riley, an agricultural business major with an emphasis in plant and soil science at Southeast, said she is excited about being able to use the drone and that she wants one for herself in the future.

"I do crop scouting in the summer ... and I plan to start my own business doing that and with this, people, because you have it, they may want you to do their fields just because you have it," Riley said.

Riley said she thinks the drone will be beneficial for students whenever they look for a career in the future.

"It'll make students more marketable for when they go and get jobs," Riley said. "They can say 'Hey, I've used a drone before'. That could open opportunities for them, and then just knowing general stuff about the drones because right now I don't think a whole lot of people know a lot about them, so just the knowledge and then knowing how to use it."

Aide said that the drone is a vital piece of technology for the agriculture department, and that more technology is expected to come in the near future as well.

"It is just one piece of the emerging technology that we use in agriculture," Aide said. "Agriculture is evolving to be -- we're in a genetic revolution and we're also in a technology revolution, and the two are coming together, because we realized that by 2040 we have to double global food output to meet the demand. So this is the future to make sure everybody can eat."

The drone was funded by the University Foundation's account for agriculture at Southeast along with private donations from outside sources and will predominantly be used at the David M. Barton Agriculture Research Center in Gordonville, Missouri.

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