Resson Technologies has an idea for fighting crop disease that is so simple that it makes you wonder why no one thought of it before.

I first heard about the company at the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation’s Breakthru Boot Camp in January, when someone told me that co-founder Rishin Behl was using unmanned aerial craft. Behl and I spoke briefly, and he quickly corrected my vision of drones buzzing around the skies over New Brunswick.

Behl, a nuclear research engineer at the University of New Brunswick, is focused instead on lighter-than-air vessels that hover above a farm field and continuously monitor the crops below. It’s easily the most cost-effective means of assessing the health of crops in real time, said Behl, who has teamed up with MBA student Peter Goggin to launch Fredericton-based Resson.

Catching up with him again last week in Fredericton, Behl said the company is working on agricultural applications, projecting infrared beams from the lighter-than-air craft to constantly monitor the crops. The idea is that these scans capture the heat and reflective nature of the plants and can tell if any develop a disease.

“When we humans get sick our metabolism changes,” said Behl. “In plants, it shows up in less infrared absorption and greater reflection.”

Crop disease can spread quickly and costs Canadian farms hundreds of millions of dollars each year. By detecting the outbreak of disease quickly, farmers can destroy afflicted plants before the disease spreads.

Behl said the agricultural product is only the first application for Resson’s technology, and the company is exploring a military product that would allow soldiers in battle to launch a vessel and view the field from above. These two initial applications could lead to new uses for the technology.

“This is the wave of the future,” said Behl. “Fighter aircraft costs are rising rapidly but (we believe) many small, inexpensive things can be used to do the job of one expensive thing.”

The vessels would cost the user $500 to $800 each, and would be easy to use. The most complicated part is the software that’s needed to interpret the readings picked up by the scanners.

Behl and Goggin are receiving mentoring from the Pond-Deshpande Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at UNB. They are trying to raise about $200,000 in seed funding to launch a prototype, complete market studies and protect their intellectual property.