AUG awarded new AAFC project for the development of a crop disease risk assessment tool

Earlier this year in April, AUG won a new project under Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC)’s AgriScience Program. This project is focused on developing and demonstrating a novel crop disease risk assessment tool using remote sensing.

This tool will incorporate early crop classification, crop phenology and soil moisture estimates derived from earth observation remote sensing data. The objective of this 3-year project is to develop technologies that are capable of daily crop disease risk assessment and monitoring, including early season crop classification, enhancing crop phenology estimation and perdiction, and soil moisture estimation techniques.

This project is developed in collaboration with AAFC, Canola Council of Canada, and Bioenterprise Corporation. The final product of this project will be a web-based tool that will be fully tested and validated to assess and monitor crop disease risks.

The project will also further enhance AAFC’s technology to estimate surface soil moisture and crop biophysical information using SAR satellites. The crop phenology and soil moisture information will be integrated with meteorological information to develop a web-based disease risk tool for both the Canadian and global agriculture industry. The technology will positively transform agricultural production and efficiency by applying emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data analytics. It will also strengthen knowledge transfer and adoption by utilizing open access free satellite sensors, such as Sentinel-1/2 and RADARSAT Constellation Mission Compact Polarimetry data that will be conducive to a larger scale deployment of the technology.