Drone tech to boost ryegrass production

Australia’s dairy feed base could see significant gains thanks to what could be the world’s most detailed perennial ryegrass testing field project.

The Hamilton-based project, developed by scientists from Agriculture Victoria, harnesses 3D-imaging technology mounted on an aerial drone to accurately capture plant height and structure. The organisation hopes the ground-breaking project will help triple the genetic gains in ryegrass, which is a key feed material for Australia's dairy industry.

The field trial consists of 270,000 ryegrass plants on six hectares at Agriculture Victoria's Hamilton site. Measuring these plants has long been a labour-intensive exercise, requiring each plant and plot to be measured and assessed with a score from one to nine.

The new project means pasture breeding companies will be armed with better varieties at a faster rate than conventional methods.

Agriculture Victoria research scientist, Dr Pieter Badenhorst, says the trial starts with scientists using GPS to strategically plant each of the ryegrass varieties across the research site.

"This enables our advanced imaging cameras mounted on an aerial drone to capture precise plant biomass measurements for each plant, in a flyover that only takes around 14 minutes," he explains.

"The drone data is then combined with 3D measurements taken by ground-based laser and sonar instruments to measure plant height and structure and data captured from on-site weather stations that correlate the plant growth with weather patterns."

The combined data is then sent to the AgriBio research centre located in Bundoora. Biomass measurements from the images are extracted by computational biology specialists, while genomics specialists genotype selected plants.

"This work will contribute to the development of ryegrass varieties specifically suited to the Australian environment," Dr Badenhorst says.