Drones can now detect subtle soybean canopy damage from dicamba at one ten-thousandth of the herbicide’s label rate — simulating vapor drift — eight days after application. This advancement in remote sensing from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign provides a science-based tool to accurately detect and report crop damage at the field scale, reducing human error and bias.
It’s a tool Aaron Hager has been calling for since dicamba-tolerant soybeans — and the accompanying surge in dicamba use and off-target damage — arrived on the scene in 2016.