sUAS in Viticulture

Flying a drone could help your vineyard operation because checking things out from the sky lets you quickly gather information to support decision-making for your crop(s).

We are a team from the grape pathology lab at Virginia Tech’s Alson H. Smith Jr. Agricultural Research and Extension Center. We have begun researching the benefits for incorporating drones into the monitoring and management of vineyard crop performance. We experimented with several aerial drones to see if they could help our daily operations.

Rather than focusing on the research side (e.g., refining the wavelength of the camera, etc.), we are interested in the very applied application of aerial drones in viticulture, especially to detect plant stress levels, which could include stress caused by grape diseases. However, as soon as we started, we realized that you could get overwhelmed by the information, quickly.

Therefore, as part of our research and extension activities, we decided to develop a web resource specific for growers or students interested in using aerial drones for vineyard management. Rather than making decisions for you, the purpose of this website is to help you find information that could relate to your use-case scenario.

As of Dec 2023, this website is still under maintenance. If you came here by mistake, please come back in a month!

Mizuho Nita, PhD
Associate Professor and Extension Plant Pathologist (Grape disease management)
Virginia Tech

Kellee Walters

Grace Lily