LSU Testing Use Of Drones In Agriculture

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — LSU AgCenter researchers are examining the possibility of using unmanned drones to help farmers monitor their crops from the air.

"The technology appears to be promising," AgCenter engineer Randy Price says.

Price says a drone was used recently to check freeze damage in a sugarcane field by taking aerial photographs.

He says the AgCenter hopes to send a drone equipped with a sensor to measure crop growth. The device measures the growth of a plant, providing indications of whether more fertilizer is needed on specific areas of a field.