By Dave Graves
Wheat researchers at South Dakota State University are perfecting an AI-powered web application designed to speed the work of wheat breeders and equip farmers with a more accurate tool for making decisions.
Professor Sunish Sehgal began taking photos in 2022 to develop this AI tool. WheatAI (wheatai.net) was built from smartphone and drone images of winter wheat taken five times between May and July at SDSU research farms near Pierre and Brookings and producer fields in Winner and Hayes.
In 2025, Sehgal, along with Maitiniyazi Maimaitijiang, an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Geospatial Sciences, started developing a working prototype designed to estimate yield based on various plant characteristics and assess wheat diseases, including those caused by Fusarium, a fungal pathogen that can infect wheat plants and damage kernels.
The project brings together Sehgal's expertise in wheat breeding and genetics and Maimaitijiang's expertise in remote sensing, AI and computer vision. Their collaboration aims to make wheat phenotyping faster, accurate, consistent and accessible to researchers and producers.
Working alongside multiple graduate students, Sehgal and Maimaitijiang developed the platform, which can now analyze nine plant characteristics. The team plans to add another 10 to 12 traits to the platform before it is released to the public, tentatively in 2028.
When WheatAI is released at wheatai.net, it will be at a price everyone can afford—free. "Nothing like this exists in the world that is free. We intend to democratize the phenotyping and send it to the last mile so that the farmer and students can use it freely," Sehgal said.
Source : sdstate.edu