PONTIAC, Ill. – It’s a question that takes some pondering: How do you get an aerial spraying drone with rotaries and extended booms out of the middle of a field of 9-foot-high corn in August?
Jason Webster, the chief agronomist at Precision Planting, was faced with that dilemma at the company’s research farm in mid-summer when a Rantizo spraying drone suddenly set down in the middle of the field.
Companies provide him with equipment to demonstrate to farmers and crop advisors touring the research farm, and he had a tour coming in a few hours.
As a safety feature, the Rantizo spraying drone is designed to land immediately if it senses a wall or some danger. Webster didn’t know why it suddenly landed where it did. He did know he needed to get it out of the field with minimal damage to both the specialized equipment and the corn.
First, he sent in reconnaissance.
Part of his aerial crop scouting system included a smaller drone which could help him find the larger one and map its location.
Once found, the next question was how to get it out.
Someone suggested using the Hagie high boy for the rescue mission as a way to minimize crop and equipment damage. So the team maneuvered the Hagie out to the designated location in the field, gently loaded the drone and returned it to safety.
Upon hearing the story, a farmer on an Aug. 10 tour of the Precision Technology Institute research plots joked about using a $360,000 machine to rescue a $60,000 machine. Webster laughed and proceeded with a demonstration of three drones that went smoothly.
When talking about the role of aerial views in crop scouting, he flew a Quantix drone with a combination of rotary and fixed-wing design. This drone had a vertical take-off and landing like a helicopter and flew horizontally over the fields like a plane using its RGB (color) and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI infrared) capabilities to help him figure out where there are problems in the field. Like a yield map, he can see precisely where there are issues.
To get a closer look, he sent out a small drone equipped with an Aker Tech probe to take specific photos to aid in diagnosis. It makes it easier to identify the problem and correct it, Webster said. On an earlier trip, he could clearly see grey leaf spot from the close-up photo.
Sometimes the answer to an issue may be spraying. However, even though the research farm is within miles of an aerial spraying business in Pontiac, the soonest appointment during the busy season may be 15 days out, he said.
That’s when the Rantizo spraying drone could be called to service. Webster also used it in his planned spraying operations.
He noted it took tenacity, using a 2.8 gallon sprayer and regular battery changes, but he was determined to use it to cover all the acres he needed to spray.
When Rantizo, an Iowa City-based ag-tech company specializing in drone spraying for agriculture, provides the service to customers for spraying or planting cover crops, it often uses a swarm with several drones working at once to complete the job quickly, Webster said.
Rantizo became the first company in Iowa legally authorized to use drones for aerial application of agrichemicals in July 2019.
