By Emily Cerf
Two interdisciplinary research teams at University of California, Santa Cruz, will develop agricultural technology for farmers with the support of grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) 2025 Specialty Crop Block Grant Program.
Both teams represent collaborative efforts between researchers at the UC Santa Cruz Center for Agroecology, the Environmental Studies department, and the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) department within the Baskin School of Engineering. All of the researchers are associated with the UC Santa Cruz’s AgTech Alliance, an interdisciplinary effort to build ethical agricultural technology for a sustainable future.
“Both of these projects represent what we are trying to achieve as the UC Santa Cruz AgTech Alliance: socially responsible solutions for the emerging challenges faced by farmers and other stakeholders in agriculture and food production,” said Colleen Josephson, co-director of the Ag Tech Alliance and a grant awardee.
These projects are also connected to UC Santa Cruz’s designation as an Agricultural Experiment Station (AES), in which faculty conduct land-grant mission research and transfer basic and applied knowledge to the public. AES functions are overseen by the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources (UCANR).
Source : ucsc.edu