How NASA’s Sky-High Tech Helps Wine Makers Look For Grape Disease

To look for signs of GLRaV-3, the researchers used the AVIRIS-NG instrument which is fitted inside the belly of an airplane. From the skies, it can look down at the ground using a technique called spectrometry, in which incoming light is split into different wavelengths. This shows which wavelengths have been absorbed, which gives information on the composition of whatever the instrument is pointed at.

AVIRIS-NG is typically used for ecology work, looking at factors like how ecosystems vary over seasons, or how ecological factors could affect human health. It has been used to study wildfires, oil spills, and air pollution from volcanoes erupting. In this case, the researchers used the instrument to see how the grape plants interacted with sunlight. Even though they may look normal from the outside, if a grape plant is infected with the virus, it can change how it absorbs sunlight. The researchers used machine learning to process the data from AVIRIS-NG, bringing together observations from 11,000 acres of vineyards. They were able to identify sick plants even before they showed symptoms with up to 87% accuracy, with results shared in a paper in the journal “Phytopathology.”

As well as being helpful for grape farmers, this shows how observing Earth from above could be useful for other crop issues as well. “What we did with this study targets one area of California for one disease,” said another of the researchers, Ryan Pavlick of JPL. “The ultimate vision that we have is being able to do this across the planet for many crop diseases and for growers all over the world.”

SOURCE