From Unexpected Beginnings to the Future of Digital Ag

May 15, 2026

By Dee Shore

NC State University’s Jing Zhang describes her entry into the field of plant phenomics as accidental, but the twists she encountered early on launched a career pioneering the future of agricultural science.

Zhang joined the university’s horticultural science faculty and its N.C. Plant Sciences Initiative three years ago, establishing the Translational Plant Phenomics Lab in the Plant Sciences Building on Centennial Campus.

Plant phenomics involves using high-tech automated tools to measure and analyze a plant’s observable traits — things like height, color, root structure, and response to stress.

Such information, Zhang says, holds the key to accelerating crop breeding and developing better crop management practices. With more data — coupled with faster, better tools to analyze it —scientists can gain greater insights into the complex interplay that occurs when plants with different genetics respond in different ways to similar environmental conditions.

Zhang was one of the first, if not the first, to employ plant phenomics in turfgrass science. That was back in the mid-2010s, when plant phenomics was emerging as a distinct field of study and she was a graduate student and postdoctoral researcher.

Source : ncsu.edu

Video: Root Exudates, Soil Biology, and How Plants Recruit Microbes | Field Talk Friday

Field Talk Friday | Dr. John Murphy | Root Exudates, Soil Biology, and How Plants Recruit Microbes

Most of us spend our time managing what we can see above ground—plant height, leaf color, stand counts, and yield potential. But the deeper you dig into agronomy, the more you realize that some of the most important processes driving crop performance are happening just millimeters below the surface.

In this episode of Field Talk Friday, Dr. John Murphy continues the soil biology series by diving into one of the most fascinating topics in modern agronomy: root exudates and the role they play in shaping the microbial world around plant roots.

Roots are not passive structures simply pulling nutrients out of the soil. They are active participants in the underground ecosystem. Plants constantly release compounds into the soil—sugars, amino acids, organic acids, and other molecules—that act as both energy sources and signals for soil microbes.