Agricultural applications of a low-cost infrared thermometer
Plant canopy temperature is used in many studies of plant/environment interactions and non-contact measurement is often made with radiometric surface thermometers commonly referred to as infrared thermometers. Industrial-quality infrared thermocouples are widely available and often used in agricultural research. While research on canopy temperature has provided management tools for production agriculture, the high cost of the industrial-quality infrared thermocouples has limited their adoption and use in production agriculture settings. Our objective was to evaluate a low-cost consumer-quality infrared thermocouple as a component of a wireless thermal monitoring system designed for use in a production agriculture setting. The performances of industrial-quality and low-cost consumer-quality sensors were compared under controlled constant temperature and under field conditions using both grass and cotton canopies. Results demonstrate that under controlled constant-temperature the two types of infrared thermocouples were significantly the same at 10C, 20C and 30C and significantly not the same at 40C and 50C. Across the temperature range tested, the consumer-quality infrared thermocouples temperature reading was closer to the thermocouple reading than the industrial-quality infrared thermocouples. A field comparison of industrial-quality and consumer-quality infrared thermocouple sensors monitoring a grass canopy and a cotton canopy indicated that the two types of sensors were similar over a 1335C range. The measurement of temperature made with two types of sensors would not differ significantly. Based on these results we conclude that the lower-cost consumer-quality infrared thermometers are suitable for use in production agricultural applications.
irts infrared thermometers irt/c infrared thermocouple c-q irt consumer-quality irts i-q irt industrial-quality irts tost two one-sided t-tests