Building Better Crops Together: From Hands-On Fieldwork to Drone Innovation

At the UCD Small Grains Breeding Program, this week was about teamwork in action. We harvested field plots together –– students, staff, and researchers working side by side, learning by doing. It was hands-on, fast-paced, and a reminder that good agricultural science starts in the field.

We collected biomass and nitrogen data in the traditional way––cutting, weighing, bagging, but with a bigger goal in mind. These measurements will help us train drones to "read" crop growth and nitrogen status from the air. In the future, what takes a full team several days could be done in minutes across entire fields. 

By linking fieldwork with new technology, we are building better tools to understand how crops use nitrogen and water, and how they perform under stress.