Case Study: DroneMate improves hop field decisions with Pix4D drone mapping

Cheers to precision farming: drone mapping a hop field

DroneMate, a drone mapping and precision agriculture company in Nelson, New Zealand, helps hop growers inspect dense fields where problems can be hidden by heavy foliage. The challenge was to quickly and accurately identify crop stress, weeds, and underperforming areas in a crop where RGB imagery alone was not enough to make reliable decisions.

Using Pix4Dmapper photogrammetry software with a DJI drone and Sentera single NIR sensor, DroneMate captured around 200 near-infrared images and generated NIR reflectance maps shared in farm management software and Pix4D Cloud. Pix4D enabled results in less than 24 hours, helping the grower uncover an irrigation issue, avoid harvesting an underperforming area, and identify another section that could be harvested early for better long-term crop performance.

DroneMate

Jonathan Lopardo

Chief Pilot and Operations Manager