A disease causing some real problems for citrus growers in the U.S. is citrus greening disease, also called Huanglongbing or HBL. The bacterial disease poses no threat to humans, but its effect on the trees can be devastating. Discovered in Florida in September 2005, HBL is being closely monitored. But that monitoring can be quite labor intensive and costly. At the International Conference on Precision Agriculture, Chuck caught up with Dr. Wonsuk Lee from the University of Florida, who moderated a session on “Machine Vision and Imaging Applications to Precision Agriculture” and is using some of that modern technology to more efficiently look for the disease.

“For disease detection, currently a ground crew has to inspect every single tree. That takes a very long time and is very labor-intensive work. So our work is utilizing area hyper-spectre imaging to detect the mostly infected areas, so growers can go [to those areas] and individually look at those trees to do more detailed operations,” he explained. While this particular application might not work for some row crops, he added the basic principle of detecting disease through this kind of technology could be applied to more products.

Listen to Chuck’s interview with Dr. Wonsuk Lee here: Interview with Dr. Wonsuk Lee, University of Florida

11th International Conference on Precision Agriculture Photo Album