Congratulations to Associate Professor Bertram Ostendorf and his team for winning the Westpac Innovation Challenge People’s Choice Award with their ‘Drones for Grapevines’ idea.
Bertram, along with Dr Vinay Pagay, Professor Megan Lewis and Associate Professor Lian Pin Koh, propose using a combination of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or also called drones), optical instruments and biochemistry to allow early detection of virus infections of individual grapevines at scales of square kilometres in order to prevent yield loss and disease spread.
Grapevines are highly susceptible to viruses. Infections result in lower vine productivity and fruit quality, and thus significant economic losses to the grape grower. Early detection of infection is critical to enable control techniques to be employed in order to stop the spread of disease. Current practices involving ground-based detection are costly, and small localised infections often cannot be detected. Airborne monitoring has fantastic potential for quicker, easier and earlier identification that could save the industry millions.
View the entry video here (produced by Westpac Innovation Challenge supporter Blue Chilli)
