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Collection of plant inventory (i.e., count, grade, plant size, yield) data is time-consuming, costly, and can be inaccurate. In response to increasing labor costs and shortages, there is an increased need for the adoption of more automated technologies by the nursery industry. Growers, small and large, are beginning to adopt technologies (e.g., plant spacing robots) that automate or augment certain operations, but greater strides must be taken to integrate next-generation technologies into these challenging unstructured agricultural environments. The main objective of this work is to demonstrate merging specific ground and aerial-based technologies (Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), and small Unmanned Aircraft System (sUAS)) into a holistic systems approach to address the specific need of moving toward automated on-demand plant inventory. This preliminary work focuses on evaluating different RFID tags with respect to their distance and orientation to the RFID reader. Fourteen different RFID tags, five distances (1.5 m, 3.0 m, 4.5 m, 6.0 m, and 7.6 m), and four tag orientations (the front of the tag (UP), back of the tag (DN), tag at sideways left (SL), and tag at sideways right (SR)) were assessed. Results showed that the tag upward orientation resulted in the highest scanning total for both the laboratory and field experiments. Two orientations (UP and SR) had significant effect on the scan total of tags. The distance between the reader and the tags at 1.5 m and 6.0 m did not significantly affect the scanning efficiency of the RFID system in horizontally fixed (p-value &gt, 0.05) position regardless of tags. Different tag designs also produced different scan totals. Overall, since most of the tags were scanned at least once (except for Tag 6F), it is a very promising technology for use in nursery inventory data acquisition. This work will create a unique inventory system for agriculture where locations of plants or animals will not present a barrier as the system can easily be mounted on a drone. Although these experiments are focused on inventory in plant nurseries, results for this work has potential for inventory management in other agricultural sectors.

Kalmia latifolia L. (mountain laurel), an attractive flowering shrub, is considered to be a high-value ornamental plant for the eastern United States. Limited information on the genetic diversity and structure of K. latifolia is available, which obstructs efficient germplasm utilization and breeding for adaptability to southeastern environmental conditions. In this study, the genetic diversity of 48 wild K. latifolia plants sampled from eight populations in the eastern U.S. was assessed using eight inter simple sequence repeat (ISSR) markers. A total of 116 bands were amplified, 90.52% of which (105) were polymorphic. A high level of genetic diversity at the species level was determined by Nei&rsquo, s gene diversity (0.3089) and Shannon&rsquo, s information index (0.4654), indicating that K. latifolia was able to adapt to environmental changes and thus was able to distribute over a wide latitudinal range. In terms of the distribution of genetic diversity, Nei&rsquo, s genetic differentiation and analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) showed 38.09% and 29.54% of diversity existed among populations, respectively, elucidating a low-to-moderate level of among-population genetic differentiation. Although a relatively large proportion of diversity was attributed to within-population variation, low diversity within populations (mean genetic diversity within populations (HS) = 0.19) was observed. Both STRUCTURE and unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA) dendrograms exhibited the clustering of populations that inhabit the same geographic region, and four clusters correlated with four geographic regions, which might be attributed to insect pollination, small population size, and environmental conditions in different habitats. These results function as an essential step towards better conserving and utilizing wild K. latifolia resources, and hence promoting its genetic improvement and breeding for adaptability to southeastern environmental conditions.