Aminata Sarr cultivates precision agriculture innovations at the Tidewater Agricultural Research and Extension Center
Building upon experience with programming and sensors, Sarr plans to use skills acquired at Virginia Tech to improve farm profitability and sustainability in her home country of Senegal.
Visiting scholar Aminata Sarr arrived at Virginia Tech’s Tidewater Agricultural Research and Extension Center (Tidewater AREC) from her home country of Senegal in March as a participant in the six-week Drone School organized by Abhilash Chandel, precision agriculture specialist, and Maria Balota, crop physiologist.
During the program, she learned how to use remote sensing in precision agriculture for the collection and analysis of drone imagery. When other international participants returned to their respective countries, Sarr stayed on to continue working with Chandel’s lab.
A Ph.D. student at the International Institute for Water and Environmental Engineering in Burkina Faso, Sarr came to Virginia Tech on a scholarship from the Regional Scholarship and Innovation Fund/Partnership for Skills in Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology. The scholarships enable African students to complete their Ph.D. studies and research in "transformative technologies that have a far-reaching positive impact on society."
Sarr, whose thesis focuses on automated irrigation, chose Virginia Tech after learning more about Chandel and his work in precision agriculture and data management.
“Professor Chandel is working on drones and sensors that enable greater precision in several areas of agriculture, such as crop development monitoring, plant disease management, fertilization, and irrigation for better water management,” said Sarr. “All of these are invaluable for developing agriculture, especially in African countries where the majority of the population depends on agriculture for their livelihood, especially in rural areas, and also in the face of constraints related to water scarcity and the impact of climate change.”
Aminata Sarr (second from left) looks on with fellow students as they prepare for drone flight under the instruction of Professor Abhilash Chandel (far right) during the Tidewater AREC Drone School. Photo by Suzanne M. Pruitt.
Building upon her experience with programming and connecting sensors at the Tidewater AREC, she continues to develop an Internet-of-Things integrated platform for farm-level agro-climate monitoring and data management.
“I am glad that Aminata became a part of my Precision Agriculture and Data Management program,” said Chandel. “She is a very dedicated student and was able to learn and work on technologies like IOT and programming that she hadn’t worked on before. In addition, she has also been actively contributing to other research projects of the program. I am sure she will carry with her a lot of advanced professional skills from the program that will support her career.”
Sarr will be on-site at the Tidewater AREC until mid-November. After completing her Ph.D., she hopes to continue her work as a postdoctoral researcher.
“The knowledge and skills acquired during my stay in the precision agriculture lab will be of great use to me,” said Sarr. “I'm going to use them to help farmers in my country develop their farming systems to increase their profits and improve their standard of living, and to preserve the natural resources used in agriculture for more sustainable use to meet the future demands of the population.”
