Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/744696
28 NOVEMBER 2016 GOOD FRUIT GROWER www.goodfruit.com "We need a different sensor," said Young Kim, CEO of Digital Harvest, a Virginia precision agriculture com- pany, at an August conference in Pendleton, Oregon. "The multispectrum sensor is just too crude." Vargas also is testing out the drone to delineate the price points of wine by vine vigor from the air, something he does from fixed-wing aircraft now. Lower vigor vines tend to produce better fruit, so he uses the aerial imagery from manned planes to find those areas and tell his pick- ers where to prioritize. However, the resolution is low. Drone imagery res- olution, on the other hand, might allow more specific instructions. The Phantom runs about $1,500, and the camera about $3,500, he said. "It pays for itself very quickly when you can go from a $30 bottle to a $65 bottle," he said. • At left, images captured from a fixed-wing aircraft (far left) and from a DJI Phantom drone using the MicaSense camera. These images were captured at the same location in the same time period, showing foliage density in the vineyard. Because the drone image data is much higher resolution than the data from a fixed-wing aircraft, Vargas says it helps him better manage his vineyards. At right, Vargas mounts a multispectral camera by MicaSense to a DJI Phantom 4 drone before flying, as seen above.