Targeted spray application to protect crop

1. An agricultural sprayer, comprising:

a set of ground engaging traction elements that support the agricultural sprayer over an agricultural surface;

a boom;

a plurality of actuatable spray nozzles, coupled to the boom, that apply a substance;

one or more processors;

memory; and

computer executable instructions, stored in the memory, that, when executed by the one or more processors, configure the one or more processors to:

obtain management data indicative of a hybrid or cultivar of a crop plant of the agricultural surface;

obtain growing condition data indicative of growing conditions at the agricultural surface during growth of the crop plant;

predict a position of a component of a crop plant of the agricultural surface based on the management data and the growing condition data; and

generate an action signal based on the predicted position of the component of the crop plant of the agricultural surface.

2. The agricultural sprayer of claim 1 , wherein the computer executable instructions, when executed by the one or more processors, further configure the one or more processors to predict a pest characteristic of the agricultural surface based on the management data.

3. The agricultural sprayer of claim 1 , wherein the crop plant comprises a corn plant and wherein the component of the crop plant comprises a corn silk of the corn plant.

4. The agricultural sprayer of claim 2 , wherein the pest characteristic comprises one of:

pest presence;

pest position;

pest quantity; or

pest type.

5. The agricultural sprayer of claim 1 , wherein the growing condition data includes weather data indicative of weather conditions at the agricultural surface during growth of the crop plant and to predict the position of the component of the crop plant of the agricultural surface based on the weather data.

6. The agricultural sprayer of claim 1 , wherein the action signal controls one of the boom or an actuatable spray nozzle of the plurality of actuatable spray nozzles.

7. The agricultural sprayer of claim 2 and further comprising:

a pest detection sensor that detects the pest characteristic during operation of the agricultural sprayer at the agricultural surface and generates a pest detection sensor signal indicative of the detected pest characteristic; and

wherein the action signal comprises a first action signal and wherein the computer executable instructions, when executed by the one or more processors, further configure the one or more processors to generate a second action signal based on the detected pest characteristic.

8. The agricultural sprayer of claim 1 and further comprising:

a crop characteristic sensor that detects the position of the component of the crop plant during operation of the agricultural sprayer at the agricultural surface and generates a sensor signal indicative of the detected position of the component of the crop plant; and

wherein the action signal comprises a first action signal and wherein the computer executable instructions, when executed by the one or more processors, further configure the one or more processors to generate a second action signal based on the detected position of the component of the crop plant.

9. The agricultural sprayer of claim 1 , wherein the action signal controls a heading of the agricultural sprayer.

10. The agricultural sprayer of claim 1 , wherein the action signal controls a speed of the agricultural sprayer.

11. A mobile agricultural sprayer comprising:

a set of ground engaging traction elements that support the mobile agricultural sprayer over an agricultural surface;

a boom;

a plurality of actuatable spray nozzles, coupled to the boom, that apply a substance;

one or more processors;

memory storing computer executable instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, configure the one or more processors to:

obtain management data indicative of a hybrid or cultivar of a crop plant of the agricultural surface;

predict a position of a component of a crop plant at the agricultural surface based on the management data;

predict a pest characteristic at the agricultural surface based on the management data; and

generate an action signal to control the mobile agricultural sprayer based on at least one of the predicted position of the component of the crop plant and the predicted pest characteristic.

12. The mobile agricultural sprayer of claim 11 and further comprising:

a pest detection sensor that senses a position of a pest on the crop plant and generates a sensor signal indicative of the position of the pest on the crop plant; and

wherein the computer executable instructions, when executed by the one or more processors, further configure the one or more processors to determine a position of the pest on the crop plant based on the pest detection sensor signal.

13. The mobile agricultural sprayer of claim 12 , wherein the computer executable instructions, when executed by the one or more processors, further configure the one or more processors to generate a second action signal to control at least one actuatable spray nozzle of the plurality of actuatable spray nozzles based on the determined position of the pest on the crop plant.

14. The mobile agricultural sprayer of claim 11 , wherein the computer executable instructions, when executed by the one or more processors, further configure the one or more processors to:

receive, from a spray pattern sensor, a sensor signal indicative of a coverage of substance sprayed onto the crop plant;

identify a coverage metric indicative of the coverage of the substance sprayed on the crop plant based on the sensor signal from the spray pattern sensor; and

generate a vehicle control signal to control a vehicle to apply additional substance to the crop plant based on the coverage metric.

15. A computer implemented method of controlling a mobile agricultural sprayer having a set of ground engaging traction elements that support the mobile agricultural sprayer over an agricultural surface, a boom, and a plurality of actuatable spray nozzles, coupled to the boom, that apply a substance, the computer implemented method comprising:

obtaining management data indicative of a hybrid or cultivar of a crop plant of the agricultural surface;

obtaining growing condition data indicative of growing conditions at the agricultural surface during growth of the crop plant;

predicting a position of a component of the crop plant based on the management data and the growing condition data; and

automatically controlling at least one actuatable spray nozzle of the plurality of actuatable spray nozzles based on the predicted position of the component of the crop plant.

16. The computer implemented method of claim 15 and further comprising:

predicting a pest characteristic of the agricultural surface based on the management data; and

automatically controlling the mobile agricultural sprayer based on the predicted pest characteristic.

17. The computer implemented method of claim 16 and further comprising:

receiving a performance sensor signal indicative of a performance of the spraying system;

generating a sprayer performance metric based on the performance sensor signal; and

generating a control signal, based on the performance metric, to surface the performance metric on an operator interface mechanism.

18. The agricultural sprayer of claim 1 and further comprising:

a plurality of spray arms spaced apart along the boom and having a longitudinal axis transverse to the longitudinal axis of the boom, wherein each spray arm, of the plurality of spray arms, includes at least one of the plurality of actuatable spray nozzles;

wherein the boom is configured to travel over a canopy of crop and the plurality of spray arms are configured to travel between rows of crop;

wherein each spray arm includes a respective plurality of actuatable spray nozzles, of the plurality of actuatable spray nozzles, spaced apart along its longitudinal axis; and

wherein the action signal controls at least one actuatable spray nozzle of the respective plurality of actuatable spray nozzles spaced apart along the longitudinal axis of a corresponding spray arm to spray substance onto the predicted position of the component of the crop plant.

19. The agricultural sprayer of claim 18 and further comprising:

a plurality of crop characteristic sensors spaced apart that each sense a respective crop characteristic of a respective crop plant in a respective row and generate a respective crop characteristic signal indicative of the respective crop characteristic;

wherein the computer executable instructions, when executed by the one or more processors, further configure the one or more processors to:

identify a position of a respective component of each respective crop plant based on the respective crop characteristic signal; and

generate a respective action signal to control the at least one actuatable spray nozzle of each vertical spray arm to spray substance on the respective component of the respective crop plant, based on the respective identified position of the respective component of the respective crop plant.