How Punjab is using Drones to capture crop characteristics

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Punjab was included in the second phase of NeGP-A for Mission   Mode Project- Agriculture (MMP-A) at the fag end of year 2014-2015. MMP-A supports NeGP-A to use ICT for agricultural development. The project is in the design and development stage. Punjab is using drones for mapping the crop conditions. Abhishek Raval speaks with Suresh Kumar, Additional Chief Secretary, Development, Punjab, DOAC on the progress in using ICT for agriculture

How is the drone technology being used in the state of Punjab and how will it benefit the farmers?
The Borlaug Institute of South Asia (BISA) and Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), has kicked off drone trials. I attended the first trial and we are confident that the technology has a use case in agriculture.

The drone technology can potentially capture the various stages of crop condition. So, farmers can optimally use agro- chemicals and fertilisers. It’s important to note that, typically, farmers have a tendency to overuse it.

Drones are connected to the satellite imagery which transmits the video footage from the inbuilt cameras to the laptops.

What characteristics of the crop can a drone identify
The drone technology helps to capture the differentiation in fruiting, colour, growth of the plant – about what’s going wrong and then the farmers are issued proper advisories by the scientists – whether it’s about less watering, fertilisers, more or less chemicals etc. This is quite a next generation assessment of crops.

As per the norms set by the scientists on the basis of the research, the crop is expected to exhibit certain standard characteristics after a specific timeframe after the sowing period. For example, the age of the crop, if it is a thirty day crop or a forty day crop; what should be the height, the colour configuration or the fruiting level of the crop. That is a standard, which we know through agricultural research. Drones can help us identify if the crop is not fruiting as per the norms, if it’s over fruiting or if it’s mellowing down in colour configuration.

Crop losses due to natural calamities, unseasonal rains or hailstorms are frequent. How the drones can be used to assess crop damage?
We are trying to do some trials to see if drones could be used to assess crop damages in case of natural calamities because we are advocating plot based crop insurance. Most of the insurance players are not convinced about the amount of damage as claimed due to excess rains, hailstorms or frost. Some plots are damaged and some are not damaged. The drones can be configured to navigate in a 30 mtr by 30 mtr plot to assess the damage. The insurers are also being associated to see whether we can successfully use drone technology to assess crop damages in the event of excess rains or natural calamity and try and introduce plot based insurance. BISA is also researching various applications of IoT for agriculture but it’s at a very initial stage.

We want to connect the farmers with the latest and the most modern IT techniques available. We also want to provide the best possible information available to the farmers to take farming related decisions and most importantly, the subsidy and other funding should be transferred directly to the farmer’s bank account.

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