{"id":182703,"date":"2026-01-29T11:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T16:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/29\/harnessing-ai-with-drone-imagery-to-detect-costly-celery-disease-before-symptoms-surface-news\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T12:20:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T17:20:14","slug":"harnessing-ai-with-drone-imagery-to-detect-costly-celery-disease-before-symptoms-surface-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/29\/harnessing-ai-with-drone-imagery-to-detect-costly-celery-disease-before-symptoms-surface-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Harnessing\u00a0AI with drone imagery to detect costly\u00a0celery disease before symptoms surface News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.ufl.edu\/2026\/01\/celery-disease\/\">Harnessing\u00a0AI with drone imagery to detect costly\u00a0celery disease before symptoms surface News<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.ufl.edu\/2026\/01\/celery-disease\/\">https:\/\/news.ufl.edu\/2026\/01\/celery-disease\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-01-29 11:30:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"news.ufl.edu\">news.ufl.edu<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Research Objective and Funding<\/strong>: University of Florida scientists, with support from two grants, are initiating a project to use AI and drones for early detection of early blight in Florida&#8217;s celery crops.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Purpose of Early Detection<\/strong>: Early blight detection helps reduce crop losses, cut costs, and lessen fungicide use, improving both economic and environmental outcomes for growers.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Technology and Methods<\/strong>: Drones equipped with multispectral imaging will identify disease signs before they are visible to human eye, with AI tools analyzing the data to make targeted fungicide application possible.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Location and Importance<\/strong>: Florida grows celery on 1,500 acres annually, ranking third in national production; early disease detection is crucial due to quick spread of diseases like early blight in South Florida.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Project Leaders and Involvement<\/strong>: Led by plant pathologist Katia Viana Xavier, the project involves collaboration with Larissa Carvalho Ferreira and input from growers, crop consultants, and UF\/IFAS Extension specialists.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Potential Benefits<\/strong>: Real-time weather-based AI systems allow precise farming practices, avoiding unnecessary fungicide use which protects ecosystems and reduces costs.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Field Testing and Training<\/strong>: Commercial field trials are underway with grower participation, and UF Extension is organizing field days and workshops to facilitate adoption of the new technology.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Future Extension<\/strong>: Beyond celery, the drone-based monitoring system will support broader research on crops like lettuce and advance precision agriculture across Florida.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Harnessing\u00a0AI with drone imagery to detect costly\u00a0celery disease before symptoms surface News https:\/\/news.ufl.edu\/2026\/01\/celery-disease\/ Publish Date:&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":182704,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/news.ufl.edu\/media\/newsufledu\/images\/2026\/01\/Mass-production-of-celery-in-Florida-Photo-UFIFAS-Tyler-Jones-2.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182703"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182703"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":182705,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182703\/revisions\/182705"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}