University of Idaho has been awarded a $6 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop new data collection technologies and AI models to breed stronger, higher-yielding cereal crops. The research aims to reduce harvest losses that disrupt the global food supply and cost farmers billions of dollars each year.
The four-year NSF Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) award will bring together artificial intelligence experts, engineers, plant biologists and geneticists from U of I, Clemson University and University of Nebraska Medical Center to improve the predictive science behind breeding crops such as wheat, corn and sorghum.
The research addresses one of agriculture’s persistent challenges: plant stems bending or breaking before harvest — a problem called stalk lodging. According to Bayer Crop Science, lodging causes an estimated 5% to 25% of cereal crops to be lost worldwide each year. When plants fall over because of high winds or other environmental stressors, they become more vulnerable to pests and disease and often cannot be harvested, impacting farming operations and reducing food production and crop quality.
“Two-thirds of the world’s calories come from wheat, corn and rice, all crops that suffer from stalk lodging,” said Daniel Robertson, associate professor of mechanical engineering and th
Source : uidaho.edu