Sign up today for free commodity-based, two-day drone workshops

Erin Bunting - July 19, 2018

A series of free two-day workshops are offered for grape, nursery and row crop growers this summer and fall. The registration ends July 28, so sign up today!

Drone flying over a field of grapes. Photo by Erin Bunting, MSU.

This summer and fall, Bruno Basso, Michigan State University Foundation Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and Erin Bunting, director of RS&GIS and assistant professor in the Department of Geography, Environment and Spatial Sciences, will be hosting drone workshops for specific commodity groups. These two-day intensive workshops are free to growers as result of funding from grants from Project GREEEN and AgBioResearch. At the workshops, growers will develop an understanding of drone-based data collection and analysis specifically related to each commodity.

Agriculture commodity group	Location	Date
Tree/bush fruit	Southwest Michigan Research and Extension Center, Benton Harbor, Michigan	Aug. 9 and 10
Grapes	Northwest Michigan Horticulture Research Center, Traverse City, Michigan	Sept. 13 and 14
Nursery stock	Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan	Sept. 6 and 7
Row crops	Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan	Sept. 13 and 14

At the workshops, attendees will:

Learn the essential elements required to safely conduct commercial flight and mapping operations in the National Airspace System including flight planning and preparation.
Take part in hands-on drone flights, both manual and autonomous.
Develop an understanding of analysis techniques and applications in precision agriculture.
Gain a brief overview of Remote Sensing and its management applications.
Leave the course with a clear understanding of the Drone-to-GIS workflow, including

planning and completing missions, processing data and analyzing said data in GIS.

Space is limited at each of the workshops. Interested participants can answer the questions and register for a workshop at Project GREEEN Drone Training.

The registration deadline is July 28. Please contact Erin Bunting (ebunting@msu.edu) or Bruno Basso (basso@msu.edu) for more information.

Check out the drone imagery video of fruit and vegetable fields at the Southwest Michigan Research and Extension Center as well as the MSU Horticulture Farm.

To learn more about the applications of drones in nursery production, check out “The future of using drones in nursery production.”

This article was published by Michigan State University Extension. For more information, visit https://extension.msu.edu. To have a digest of information delivered straight to your email inbox, visit https://extension.msu.edu/newsletters. To contact an expert in your area, visit https://extension.msu.edu/experts, or call 888-MSUE4MI (888-678-3464).