Prosser Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center (IAREC)
innov8.ag's business model includes working closely with land-grant universities, who are chartered by Congress to invest in agricultural research. One such university is Washington State University, and this Spring we headed out to WSU's Prosser Irrigation Agriculture Research Center (IAREC) to sit down and further explore our partnership.
Dr. Lav Khot led a tour through their research offices & classroom, and introduced us to his latest research on precision ag. Some of this research includes sensing and automation technologies for site specific and precision management of production agriculture, some of which includes heavily leveraging technologies such as satellite imagery, high resolution drone imagery, and LIDAR. He then took us to tour around their lab where they build robotics for apple-picking using AI (computer vision) technology.
Later we went to their test orchard to see the implementations of their irrigation and spray system where several of our team members had the opportunity to fly our own drones to document and take images of our tour. More on WSU's Prosser IAREC below; stay tuned for more updates on this partnership!
About WSU Prosser IAREC:
The Prosser Irrigation Agriculture Research Center was established by legislative mandate in 1919 to service the agricultural research needs in Washington State. Since then the program grew with the region as an arm of the Washington Agriculture Experiment Station network. As the largest Research and Extension Center within WSU’s College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences (CAHNRS), this program has made major scientific contributions to increased food production, enhanced food safety, and nutrition for better health for all people.
With the demands of a growing population throughout the world and even with the current crisis of COVID-19 there will be an ever increasing need for greater productivity from the land, diversity in disease and pest resistant crops, and efficiency in the use and conservation of labor, mechanical, chemical, and water resources. As such Innov8.ag alongside the work of WSU Prosser IAREC scientists, staff and students will continue to be a significant contributor to transformative research and extension efforts in the region, state, and even the nation.
Collaborators at WSU Prosser IAREC
Professor Lav Khot
Associate Professor, Ag Engineering
Dr. Khot works in the Agricultural Automation Engineering research area of the Department of Biological Systems Engineering. His research and extension program focuses on “Sensing and automation technologies for site specific and precision management of production agriculture.”
Special emphasis is towards integration of:
• Remote Sensing (Unmanned and Manned Aerial Systems)
• Ground-based (Proximal) Crop Sensing
• Decision Support Systems and Information Delivery Technologies
• Precise Applications of various Production inputs
• Agricultural Machinery and processes
• Data-based modeling
Dr. Troy Peters
Professor
Biological Systems Engineering
Dr. Troy works at the Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center in Prosser, WA. Troy's primary focus is on agriculture irrigation while conducting research in Land, Air, Water Resources, and Environmental Engineering (LAWREE). This all includes deficit irrigation, irrigation water hydraulics, irrigation scheduling and management, irrigation automation, sprinkler irrigation efficiency, low energy precision application (LEPA), low elevation spray application (LESA), and crop water estimation.
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