Roving Small Grain Fields

January 25, 2024
A teal robotic rover passes over thigh-height wheat rows while a grad student wearing gray and white walks beside it with a tablet, directing its movement.

 

Over the past three years, a strange, robotic form roved the fields at the Northwest Research and Outreach Center and the St. Paul research fields. Its job? Take hundreds of photos of wheat to help breeders and growers understand the causes and spread of scab - otherwise known as Fusarium head blight (FHB). Outbreaks of scab can be devastating, cutting yield in half and contaminating the remaining crop with a mycotoxin, leaving it harmful if consumed by humans and animals

Read more about this important research and see the rover in action on the CFANS website!