CUR - The Council on Undergraduate Research

“Feeling” the Heat: Remotely Sensing Crop Temperature Response to Drought and Fruit Removal Stress

Duncan Anderson, Benjamin Miller, Sophie Drew, Casey Hamilton, Ivanellis Rodriguez, and Dr. Angela Burnett, Environmental and Climate Sciences Department, 98 Rochester St, Upton, NY 11973.

Given current trends of consumption and waste, it is estimated by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization that we will need to increase global food production by 60% within the next 30 years. To cultivate crops that are both highly productive and able to withstand stressful environmental conditions, plant physiologists seek successful individuals and their associated traits that improve their survival. Plant spectroscopy and infrared (IR) radiometry are two tools for health monitoring and trait identification that allow for high-throughput testing without using destructive sampling. Plant spectroscopy is the study of examining the energy reflected by plants to determine their traits and health, while IR radiometry remotely senses temperature, indicating when crops are expressing higher temperature indicative of drought stress. Both methods were used to evaluate the response of zucchini (Cucurbita pepo) to drought stress and continuous fruit removal at the leaf and canopy level in a field setting at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Spectroscopy allowed for the detection of crop drought stress before visual detection by showing reduced crop reflection of infrared light, a key range of the electromagnetic spectrum for plants. IR radiometry detected and quantified drought stress, identifying when droughted crops were experiencing water stress significantly different from controls, a useful tool when regions around the world are facing increased average temperatures. The successful deployment of these technologies in a field setting further develops spectroscopy use for agricultural research and thermal remote sensing use for drought detection by farmers.

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