The Hawk-Eye™ System was developed by Itri Corporation (Turf-Vu® is a division of ItriCorp). Our research facilitates continuos improvments to the system and the notice and alert algorithms.
During the 2014 growing season we developed and validated a new method for detecting crop stress remotely by the persistant measurement of the crop's leaf canopy temperature. We call this our Stress Index (SI).
In the 2015 season we continued to mature the SI and validatated that it tracks plant stress and stress relieving events.
In 2016 summer season we proved an Irrigation Index based from Hawk-Eye™ image data to facilitate the control of irrigation systems.
Our work is rooted in the concepts initiated by Jackson in 1982, that the plant can viewed as the integrator of the
soil-water-plant relationship and the canopy temperature is the indicator of water stress.
The goals of our research is to establish the protocols and algorithms that can be easily applied to turf grass, specialty crops, and row crops. We aim to development affordable and simple to operate remote sensing systems that allow plants to talk immediately actionable information.
Pictured below is a thermal image of a vineyard in the Central Valley of California. In the summer of 2014 this vineyard was the object of our study.
