Cotton precision: Digital tools tested in Texas fields
Texas A&M AgriLife partners with Coastal Bend cotton producers on digital agriculture project
The digital agriculture team of the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center at Corpus Christi has launched a project aimed at providing commercial cotton producers with advanced digital management tools and evaluating the new technology’s performance.
The researchers have teamed up with 11 cotton producers across the Texas Coastal Bend to evaluate and demonstrate the latest digital tools for in-season crop management directly in their commercial fields. The tools provide early-season estimations of crop biomass and fiber yield, allowing producers to make more timely decisions about crop management.
“Our tools integrate drone-based and satellite remote sensing data to estimate key plant features, creating digital twins of key production scenarios” said Juan Landivar, Ph.D., director of the center at Corpus Christi. “These insights are specifically designed to support critical decision-making regarding plant growth regulator timing and rates, crop defoliation timing and lint yield forecasting.”
Connecting technology to real-world production
In addition to Landivar, the project and evaluation of emerging technologies is led by a multidisciplinary team from Texas A&M AgriLife Research and the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service at Corpus Christi:
- Josh McGinty, Ph.D., AgriLife Extension agronomist and associate professor in the Texas A&M Department of Soil and Crop Sciences.
- Yuri Calil, Ph.D., AgriLife Extension economist and assistant professor in the Texas A&M Department of Agricultural Economics.
- Mahendra Bhandari, Ph.D., AgriLife Research digital agriculture lead and assistant professor in the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences.
- Pankaj Pal, Ph.D., AgriLife Research data center director and associate research scientist.
- Jose Landivar, AgriLife Research senior research associate.
- Lei Zhao, Ph.D., AgriLife Research agricultural data scientist and postdoctoral researcher.
The team works to ensure the research directly translates into economic and operational benefits for Texas growers.
Producers who participate in the project gain immediate access to a digital agriculture data hub. This platform provides near-daily updates on crop development throughout the growing season. Key features of the hub include spatial heat maps that illustrate percent canopy cover and canopy health over time.
After mid-season, the platform will also offer specific recommendations for crop termination timing and detailed lint yield estimates, giving additional decision-making support during critical production stages.
Participant cotton producers in the research will also gain early access to digital tools under development by Texas A&M AgriLife in Corpus Christi. Upcoming decision support features focus on irrigation requirement estimation, temporal crop biomass accumulation, and comprehensive assessments of economic risk and marketing prospects.
