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Drones: Revolutionizing Hydroponics & Horticulture · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hello there and welcome back to Hydroponics Daily.
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  Yesterday I talked about Greentech Amsterdam and some of the cool technology
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  that has been exhibited there.
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  One of the things I mentioned was drones and I said that the guys at Corvus
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  Drones have put together a really neat table saying where and when drones can
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  be used in hydroponics and in horticulture.
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  And that's good because it's not
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  the first thing that comes to mind when you think of drones you normally think of
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  agricultural field surveying or forestry so you can do tree surveys without
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  going up the tree horticulture you might think there's very limited application
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  but there's actually quite a few so i'll go through them germination and usables it says now i think.
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  Corvus mustn't be an english-speaking company
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  because i have no idea what usable means useables i
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  think that just means how much is germinated from
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  a seed tray so you could fly a drone over seed
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  trays if you're in a big enough greenhouse if you're propagating that
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  many plants and you could look at germination rates and
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  that can be used in breeding young plant production
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  and lettuce now pot plants
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  cut flowers orchids tomatoes you wouldn't
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  really do that because it's they're not set up but you could potentially
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  look at cutting success you could
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  even look at tomatoes you could look at graft when you
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  a lot of tomatoes now commercial crops even are grafted and
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  once that graft union has formed
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  the plants will start transpiring a lot
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  more so you could pick up differences in leaf
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  temperature so you could actually look at that with a drone.
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  That had infrared camera on
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  it so that would be good you can assess growth rates
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  if you flew through your grow room
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  and you had it mapped and you had ar you could look at growth rates
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  a regular period especially if it was an automated drone
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  so that could be used for breeding pot plants orchids
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  and lettuce they're suggesting readiness when
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  is your crop ready for harvest they're the
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  same pot plants and orchids not so
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  much lettuce because that would be a bit on weight
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  cut flowers would be on just flower development
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  really and that's quite obvious visual that one so and you would cut them as
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  as and when they're ready so that would be a person you could look at yield
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  in cut flowers and lettuce it's suggesting so i'm not sure how you could measure
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  yield maybe in flower buds per meter squared. You could measure yield,
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  I suppose, in cut flowers.
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  And lettuce, just leaf area index and things like that.
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  Pest and disease. Now, here's a good one. Could you pick up,
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  They're suggesting you can pick up thrips and aphids and caterpillars.
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  So you can pick up thrips on orchids, aphids and caterpillars.
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  I doubt you're actually picking up the thrips themselves, though.
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  I think you're probably just looking for the silvery patterns on the leaf and
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  then using image analysis software to determine that thrips are under the tack.
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  Aphids, again, you're looking for deformity of leaves rather than the actual aphid.
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  Caterpillars, I guess you could pick up a caterpillar. if you've ever seen the
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  AI cameras going through a greenhouse and spotting the ripe tomatoes,
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  and going back to readiness that is scary how fast an AI camera can pick up
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  a ripe tomato and if it can pick up a ripe tomato it can pick up a human but
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  far far faster and if it had a gun attached to it it could you know shoot that
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  gun and pick up the humans a lot faster so.
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  That's scary the tomato ripen ones so fusarium I'm guessing you're looking for signs of,
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  disease same with botrytis in lettuce and to
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  strawberries things like that you're looking for grayness on
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  the on the on the on the leaf and that would be more like ai camera and there
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  would be on the the drone it's not the drone itself doing the work anomalies
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  picking up anomalies that'd be good for breeding pot plants cut flowers and
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  lettuce any crop really though,
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  tomatoes not so much because you're flying through a
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  vine cropping tomatoes so anomaly is really much
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  much harder whereas if you're thinking about young plants pot
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  plants cut flowers orchids lettuce you're looking
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  top down and that's where drones come into the area looking at top top down
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  whereas vines like tomatoes and cucumbers aubergines and peppers to some extent
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  as well you're probably traveling through the crop and that would be a lot harder
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  for the drone to pick up anomalies, but you could potentially do it.
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  Inventory. I guess that's just number of plants for breeding young plants and pot plants.
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  Inspection. Now that's where tomatoes,
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  that would be the only main use in tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers.
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  Inspection. So like flying through the vines regularly.
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  And then the last one, it says gutter. And then that's lettuce.
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  I'm not sure what that means. That could potentially mean cleaning the gutters
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  or cleaning the glass itself.
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  Glass cleaning is not on here, but potentially that is a massive use of drones
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  in hydroponics and horticulture is the ability to clean greenhouses.
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  If you think about how you would normally clean the glass on a greenhouse, it is scary.
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  I'm scared of heights and I wouldn't want to fall through a Venlo greenhouse,
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  you know, these really, really tall greenhouses.
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  The glass is extremely thin, it's horticultural
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  glass so it's designed to have maximum light penetration
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  so it's not designed to withstand a 100 kilo
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  bloke falling on it because he's tripped over
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  one of the gutters and while he was cleaning his
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  glass so i would never get up there you'd never catch me up there and some of
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  the chemicals they use traditionally are really really nasty i think hydrofluoric
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  acid has been used in the past i don't know if it's still used i doubt it and
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  that's a horrible you go and look at some youtube videos you want to know how
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  bad that one is put hydrofluoric acid chicken leg.
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  Into youtube and you'll see a horrible horrible video of
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  how disgusting hydrofluoric acid is so you don't want to be getting that on
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  you you certainly don't want to trip up with a bucket of it in your hand and
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  so if you can apply these hazardous chemicals get up there on a greenhouse and
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  just spray them onto your glass and clean the glass then that would be fantastic
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  because you can maximize your light input.
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  Without cleaning it, you get algae and dirt buildup and your yield drops significantly.
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  So drones are a massive way of improving efficiency, reducing costs,
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  and reducing health and safety risk, which is a massive one,
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  on hydroponic nurseries.
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  So drones in horticulture, I'm sure there are probably many other uses of drones. Security, See?
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  Is another one obviously you know you could fly them around very large greenhouses
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  like thanet earth in kent and stop people from you know who might want to do
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  your company harm from and things like that you know if somebody saw a drone
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  flying at them if they were burgling,
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  a unit they'd probably run faster than if it was a dog
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  i would imagine because you don't know what's on that drone do you so yeah
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  you could you could do security there's loads of other uses of
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  drones if you can think of one let me know and i'll mention
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  it in a follow-up podcast an obvious
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  one that you might think is spraying pesticide fertilizer or biostimulants onto
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  the crop and that's certainly a potential option however in the uk and i think
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  in europe no pesticide is.
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  Registered for application with a drone
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  i think in china you can use a drone not
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  sure about any of the countries in north america or elsewhere that
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  makes it difficult and it also makes it an area
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  where i personally don't want to get into because
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  you have a lot of drone companies phoning you up if
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  you're in this sort of sectors i'm in and they say are you
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  interested in applying your fertilizer or your biostimulant uh
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  using a drone and you're like well no because i don't
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  want to be the first chump to do it because if there's a health and safety issue
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  with you know spray drift and things like this i don't want the health and safety
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  executive on my back i don't want you know it's attracting attention my technology
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  as a fertilizer manufacturer and as a biostimulant manufacturer,
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  doesn't require a drone to be applied.
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  So I'm quite happy for other people to be the first adopters of the technology
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  and be the test cases. So I don't need drones.
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  To deliver the product it's not essential it's a nice to have if
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  it works and if it if it's allowed but
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  you don't want to be the person who puts his head on the block or her
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  head on the block to try the new technology on behalf
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  of the drone manufacturer so in theory you
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  could put a fertilizer on in theory you could put a biostimulant on
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  you could put a macro biological
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  control agent like an insect doesn't like that
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  you couldn't put a microorganism biocontrol agent
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  and you couldn't put a biopesticide or a
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  pesticide on in the uk unless it
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  was registered for use and they are developing ways of
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  doing that because obviously if you can do on a field scale you
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  can reduce tractor use and you
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  could massively reduce farmer time and
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  effort and reduce co2 emissions and things like this the problem is that the
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  formulations for all the products that go on would have to be changed because
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  of the amount of water that would have to be reduced because you obviously couldn't
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  put 200 litres of water or 400 litres of water per hectare,
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  which is what you would do if you had an agricultural sprayer or even a greenhouse sprayer.
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  So you'd have to look at a new formulation to apply any product with a drone.
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  So yeah drones got potential there are very large drones now that can apply dusts and sprays,
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  but they're very early days and so that's one use which in theory you think
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  would be the first one to be used but it's actually not on those lists as well
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  one thing they have not got is stress.
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  Environmental stress that would be one of the first things
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  i would look at because i used to run a project in lancaster
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  university about using booms that went
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  across hydroponic beds and and that
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  would have a thermal imaging camera
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  that would assess how hot the plants were to see which plants were
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  stressed and then only water the plants that were
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  stressed now a drone is going to be a lot
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  cheaper than a boom with a load of thermal imaging cameras
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  attached to every single one every single position on
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  the boom so drones would be amazing for
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  stressing determining stress in
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  plants so corvus drones i think you need an extra
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  column or two for your
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  drones one for applying products and
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  then one for determining environmental stress especially
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  water deficits okay so as i
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  say still here at green tech Amsterdam if you've got any other
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  applications for drones let me know everybody else
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  is out smoking pancakes and having fun in amsterdam town
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  center i'm the sad plonker in
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  the hotel room recording podcasts but i'll be the first one there tomorrow morning
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  because i know green tech on the last day there's no one there in the morning
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  for the first hour so i can get away with a lot of stuff i shouldn't be doing
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  which i'm not going to say on here just in case anyone from green tech's listening
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  okay until tomorrow thank you very much for listening.
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  And if you did pick up any information from me about the podcast at Greentech,
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  then share it with as many hydroponic and horticulturalists that you know.
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  Thank you very much for listening. Goodbye.