News — Faculty of Agricultural, Nutritional and Engineering Sciences

UAV-based Spot Spraying Against Plant Diseases¹

Plant diseases often exhibit a patchy distribution within fields. The application of fungicides, however, is often based on environmental conditions and visual assessment and then, in practice, is homogeneous over entire fields. A site-specific control of plant diseases with robotics and drone technology provides the potential to improve the efficacy of disease control while reducing the negative impact on agricultural ecosystems..

Digital Agricultural Avatar²

The PhenoRob Digital Agricultural Avatar is a software that facilitates access and usability of process-based simulation agro-models under one roof. Our aim is to provide information and a usage platform to make process-based agro-models available in an appealing way both for users as well as for the public.

MULTIPLIERS: Where Everyone Wins³

Around 1,500 schoolchildren from six EU countries have been engaged in intensive study of some of the challenges currently facing the world in the company of natural science experts. After completing each module on a different topic, they have been acting as “multipliers,” sharing their knowledge and experiences with their family, friends and classmates. Three schools from Bonn took part.

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Bee Demonstrator - Detect and Identify Pollinators in the Field⁴

Field margins, floral plantings, and crops offering nectar and pollen to insects may contribute to ecosystem service delivery (pollination) and ecological intensiﬁcation of agriculture. The application of machine learning on data collected using low-cost RGB cameras represents a new opportunity to investigate, evaluate, and optimize the attractiveness of such cropping systems to beneficial insects.

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Improved Efficiency and Resource Conservation—But Greater Dependence Too?⁵

Digitalization is ushering in far-reaching change in all areas of our lives, not least in the agricultural sector. Researchers from the University of Bonn have now presented a study on how international agricultural corporations and Big Tech firms are using digital platforms to transform the agriculture industry. They make it clear that, although the technologies harbor significant potential, they also risk amplifying existing power structures and creating new dependencies.

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Africa: Better roads promote greater dietary diversity⁶

A balanced diet is important for reducing hunger and malnutrition. Researchers thus advocate that small farmers in low- and middle-income countries should try to produce as many different foods as possible for their own consumption. However, a new study is now questioning this recommendation to some extent. It suggests that good access to regional markets is more important than farmers growing a large diversity of crops on their own smallholding. Better-functioning markets increase the variety of foods available locally, which benefits the population as a whole. The results are being published in the journal “Nature Food.”

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Automated Leaf-Level Inspection of Crops by Combining UAV and UGVs⁷

Robotic systems play a major role for realizing the vision of sustainable crop production. While Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly used to monitor the health status of agricultural fields using sensors like RGB cameras, multi-spectral cameras, and LiDAR, it is often still necessary to literally walk into the field to do close-up inspections of individual plants or even leaves for the detection of diseases or nutrient deficiencies in early stages of plant growth.

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PhenoRob: Research Priorities to Leverage Smart Digital Technologies for Sustainable Crop Production⁸

Agriculture today faces significant challenges that require new ways of thinking, such as smart digital technologies that enable innovative approaches. However, research gaps limit their potential to improve agriculture.

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