Photonics in agriculture and food

Ottawa 28,2020

Everyone is talking about Satellite imaging, UAV’s in agriculture and making sure that the food we are growing is safe and plenty for the earth population.

COVIS-19 has labeled agriculture and the supply chain as essential services, and they are.

The imaging techniques used to make sure that food is plenty and safe are photonics enabled technologies like hyperspectral, multi-spectral and super-spectral.

Hyperspectral, multi-spectral and super-spectral imaging used on Satellites and on UAV’s can give us information about plants and health of ecosystems. Advances in deep learning, specifically using residual neural networks on high resolution RGB imagery seem to help in terms of individual tree detection and delineation for advanced forest inventory as presented in the work published by Weinstein et al (2020) and the neon group.link https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S157495412030011X

NRC is operating one of the world’s first airborne polarimetric shortwave infrared hyperspectral system and one of its application is wildlife and vegetation monitoring. https://nrc.canada.ca/en/research-development/products-services/technical-advisory-services/hyperspectral-imaging-technologies

Recently Electro optics magazine (EO-July 2020 edition https://www.electrooptics.com/issue/july-2020) was containing an article by Ahmed Korayem from Si-Ware system about a handheld spectral device scanning for agriculture the NeoSpectra-Scanner and another article titled “Every grain counts” by Greg Blackman who speaks to machine builder Buhler about how optical sensing can maximize yield in grain processing.

Photonics in agriculture and food is becoming a crucial player in ensuring safe and plenty food for the earth population and a lot of photonics companies are playing a vital role.