In recent years, Purdue University's Katy Rainey and Keith Cherkauer have worked to predict soybean biomass from drone imagery in Indiana.
"We're now expanding that capability to all the public soybean breeding programs in the region," said Rainey, professor of agronomy, who also directs the Purdue Soybean Center. Soon, she and Cherkauer will begin receiving drone imagery collected on a panel of 1,200 soybean varieties that breeders have planted in 11 states across the U.S. north-central region.
"Here at Purdue, we'll do all the processing and modification of the images to predict biomass," she said. The effort is part of the SOYGEN3 (Science Optimized Yield Gains across ENvironments) project, which consists of eight universities, including Purdue.
"The overarching goal in this experiment is to develop methods and models for selecting soybeans that will be high yielding in future extreme environments under climate-change scenarios," Rainey said. "We know that the future environments we're going to grow soybean in are different from the ones we have now because climate is changing. We're getting more extreme weather, as well, from climate change."
The project exploits software, called Plot Phenix, which rapidly converts aerial crop photographs into useful information for plant breeding, crop modeling and precision agriculture. Rainey and Cherkauer, professor of agricultural and biological engineering, and Purdue Ph.D. alumnus Anthony Hearst, CEO of Progeny Drone Inc., patented Plot Phenix in 2022.
"I'm interested in water use, the effects of environments, and the ability to measure and simulate soybean across large areas," said Cherkauer, who also directs the Indiana Water Resources Research Center. "Having locations that are farther apart increases the likelihood that we will have a range of environmental conditions."
Minnesota soybean breeders and farmers plant different genetic stock than those in Indiana, for example, which requires more heat-resistant varieties. But even areas that share the same annual average precipitation could experience dramatically different years.