We have furthered our understanding about how nematodes cause problems for the walnut farming industry as well as what solutions are currently in place to keep the nematodes in check. Nematodes are microscopic organisms that feed off of the roots of plants (in our case, walnut trees). If left unchecked, Nematodes can jeopardize the growth of walnut trees in the central valley, resulting in heavy losses of food, money, and resources used to grow the trees. The traditional way to see if an area is infested with nematodes is to take soil samples from various locations within the desired site and run tests on the samples in a lab to see if the samples are infested with nematodes. These tests as well as the data analyzing can take anywhere from 24 to 72 hours to complete. Our proposed solution that we believe to be more efficient is to equip a Mavic 2 Enterprise drone with a thermal camera and to have it fly over fields of the walnut trees to scan the leaves of the trees using multispectral remote sensing. We can sample the temperature of a healthy tree and compare it to the temperature of an infected tree and take the difference. The drone will detect changes in the temperature with a thermal camera to see if there are nematodes, or if the tree is healthy. After the drone takes the temperature of every tree in the field, we can then predict which areas are most likely infested. Someone can then be sent to this potentially infested area to hunt down the nematodes and get rid of them before any further damage can be done to the crops and jeopardize the growth of the walnut trees. This can save the farmers millions of dollars from damage, tree pesticides, water, and other resources required to grow these plants, and will require significantly less time that would otherwise be spent taking soil samples and analyzing them in a lab.
