Patent ID: 9451745
Filing Date: 2016-09-27
CPC Classification: A01G,G01J

Claim Text:
1. A method for managing the irrigation of plants comprising the steps of: a) providing the multi-band sensor in the vicinity of plants within a target control area subject to irrigation, the multi-band sensor comprising: b) measuring and collecting surface temperature data for a plant canopy or soil at time (t) and designating the measured temperature T c) transmitting said temperature data and spectral reflectance data to a remote microprocessor-based computer control unit; d) correcting said temperature data and spectral reflectance data for the sun angle at which it was collected; e) evaluating the corrected temperature data and spectral reflectance data to determine if they were collected from soil or plant canopy by calculating normalized difference vegetative index (NDVI) at time (t) to get NDVI(t), and identifying NDVI for a soil type in a target irrigation management zone to determine a value designated NDVI