ASHS 2024 Conference

Introduction and Overview

Speaker: Kathryn Orvis
Professor
Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture
Purdue University
625 Ag Mall Drive
West Lafayette, IN 47907-2010

Title: Digital Agriculture and AI on Specialty Crops Production

Description: Digital agriculture is the 4th agricultural revolution and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is part of it. Currently, in the "connected agriculture"; era, many technologies have been released on the marked regarding the use of multispectral
sensors for many purposes in agriculture. This talk is going to cover information on how to use Digital Agriculture online platforms to process multispectral imagery, and how AI can be used to collect individual in-field plant data.

Speaker: Luan Pereira de Oliveira
Assistant Professor and Precision Agriculture Extension Specialist
Department of Horticulture
University of Georgia
139 Engineering Building
2329 Rainwater Road
Tifton, GA 31793

Title: Bringing the Future of AI to the Farm.
Description: In this talk, we will cover the multitude of use cases where AI can be applied in farming – from weed detection and robotics to Generative AI-based farm assistants and Virtual Reality. We go through the industry trends of applied Artificial Intelligence and think big about farm automation for the future.

Speaker: Justin Hoffman
Chief Technology Officer of AgTechLogic


Title: From Concept to Impact: The Evolution of Moss Robotics through Industry-
University Collaboration

Description: Moss Robotics' journey began with a project focused on autonomous driving technology for tree nurseries, born out of a collaboration between Carnegie Mellon University, Robotics Institute and Hale; Hine Nursery in Tennessee. In this talk, we share the story of how we discovered the real value our solution could offer to growers, and how we refined our ideas through continuous iteration. This process transformed moss robotics from a simple concept into the company it is today. We will cover the steps of our evolution, emphasizing the practical benefits of combining academic research with industry needs to innovate effectively. Additionally, we look ahead to how emerging technologies might further influence our growth and the agricultural industry as a whole, aiming for advancements in farming practices that are both technologically sophisticated and grounded in real-world applications.

Speaker: Di Hu
Founder and CEO
Moss Robotics

Title: AI-Enhanced Computer Vision for Crop Monitoring in Controlled Environment
Agriculture

Description: Controlled environment agriculture (CEA) production remains expensive due to high operation costs. Growers can reduce production costs by nurturing crops with data, however, the data is highly diverse, and growers lack the expertise to analyze this data to derive actionable insights for informed decision-making. In addition, traditional crop monitoring is carried out manually, which makes it unfeasible to collect data daily to get actionable insights for high yields. Recent advancements in sensing and computing technologies, such as AI, computer vision, edge computing, and edge-
cloud integration, have opened opportunities to develop data-driven technologies to enhance decision-making capabilities. Integrating AI and computer vision technologies has emerged as a transformative toolset that can collect real-time plant data at high spatial and temporal resolutions, pivotal in optimizing resource management and maximizing production. The CE Engineering lab delves into cutting-edge computer vision applications within CEA, focusing on various applications, including phenotyping leafy greens, yield estimation, disease monitoring, and plant spacing optimization. This presentation will explore the details of lettuce phenotyping, disease classification, strawberry fruit classification, and yield estimation. We will delve into the technical aspects of these algorithms, including image processing techniques, machine learning models, and data integration strategies. This presentation will showcase state-of-the-art deep learning approaches, including segmentation algorithms, model training, and deep classifiers. Overall, this presentation aims to provide insights into the transformative potential of computer vision in CEA, offering a glimpse into the future of data-driven and sustainable CE production.

Speaker: Azlan Zahid
Assistant Professor,
Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering
Texas A&M AgriLife Research
Texas A&M University System
Dallas, TX 75252, USA


Panel: 30-minute panel with the above speakers, to allow time for Q&A and discussion.

Advances in Phytophthora, Pythium, and Phytopythium Species Detection, Isolation, Culture, Diagnostics, and Virulence Rejuvenation -William Errickson
Effect of Planting Date on Strawberry Yield - Samantha Simard
Evaluation of Irrigation Strategies in Watermelons - Juan Enciso

The Lower Rio Grande Valley farmers traditionally irrigate vegetable crops with furrow irrigation systems. To conserve water and mitigate the effects of droughts, there is a need to adopt more efficient irrigation and fertilization methods and practices in vegetable crops to increase crop production quality and profitability. Farmers that use furrow irrigation systems apply from 4 to 6 inches per irrigation depending on their furrow length and apply more than five irrigations during the vegetable growing season, and using between 20 inches (1.7 ac-ft) and 40 inches (3.3 ac-ft) of irrigation water in their fields. Vegetables have a shallow root system, so farmers must irrigate frequently to maintain good moisture levels during the growing season for optimum growth, possibly wasting water. We use image analysis derived from Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and irrigation soil water sensors to provide management recommendations to schedule drip and surface irrigation to conserve additional amounts of water. We established replicated research experiments using subsurface drip irrigation and soil water sensors (watermark sensors) to irrigate watermelons and other vegetable crops. We grew plants under three different water levels to trigger irrigation (50, 75, and 100 cb). A drip irrigation system with plastic mulch was placed in the field, as well as soil-water sensors, to measure and monitor the soil moisture. After calculating the water used in the three water level treatments, the 50 cb treatment used 0.27 ac-ft, the 75 cb treatment used 0.24 cb and 0.22 ac-ft was used by the 100 cb treatment. According to our results, we could conserve up to 3.0 ac-ft with our recommendations. We concluded that watermelons could be managed when the soil-water sensor readings range between 50 and 75 CB and approximately 0.3 ac-ft of water using subsurface drip irrigation. We obtained an average yield of 53,536 lb/ac, when irrigated under the 50 cb treatment, 42,059 lb/ac at 75 cb, and 36,719 lb/ac at 100 cb.

Not only are Phytophthora, Pythium, and interesting Phytopythium species potentially devastating horticultural pathogens, they regularly present challenges in vitro. In this study, multiple established and novel methodologies were built upon to bolster researchers’ ability to quickly isolate, differentiate, and promote virulence of multiple oomycetes principally collected from symptomatic conifers and nearby water sources. These methods allow greater flexibility in generating clean mycelial cultures for genetic characterization, varying pathogen structures for use in novel bioassays (such as synchronized production of sporangia or zoospores), and ultimately inoculations to evaluate oomycide efficacy or make headway towards completion of Koch’s postulates for previously uncharacterized host: pathogen pairings. Phytopythium vexans (Pp. vexans) (n=8 isolates), three Phytophthora species / species complexes including P. cinnamomi (n=10), P. cryptogea / drechsleri complex (n=4) and P. humicola (n=2), as well as 5 tentative species of Pythium, were evaluated. Isolations took two forms, standard root sampling onto Phytophthora selective media (PARPH), or water-based sampling through a modified ‘baiting/trapping’ technique that utilized on-site collected water samples in the laboratory. The ‘baits’ were Cannabis sativa seed, Vigna radiata beans, and Rhododendron maximum leaves suspended in aerated water samples or slurry of silt/soil. Samples were evaluated on V8-agar (V8A), pea agar (PA), pea broth (PB), potato dextrose agar (PDA), cornmeal agar (CMA), and water agar (WA), each of which provided distinct morphological indicators and structures useful in diagnostic guides and in bioassays or inoculations. As is typical with all plant pathogens, the longer they remain in culture, the less virulent they may become. With oomycetes, this is compounded as the pathogen will often go into chlamydospore or oospore formation (long lived survival structures) which are not ideal for experimentation. Inclusion of germinated then surface sterilized (70% ethanol for 30s) Vigna radiata and Lupinus perennis sprouts into recently poured (still liquid) 1/8 clarified V8 juice agar (1/8 clV8A) provided a media capable of rejuvenating the pathogen due to presence of living roots and dynamic plant nutrients. This allows for more predictability of zoospore formation, especially if they are intended to be used with a time sensitive trials. In numerous incidences multiple species of Phytophthora and Phytopythium vexans isolates went into zoospore release simultaneously by utilizing these approaches in combination with resource starvation and culture washing with sterile distilled water. Taken together these approaches will greatly aid any researcher working with root disease oomycetes in culture.

Optimizing planting date for strawberry in California production is a sustainable measure to maximize yield and maintain plant health. The goal of this project is to assess the optimal planting date for two predominant cultivars: 'Monterey' and 'Fronteras'. The trial was conducted in field 25 at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. The experimental area consisted of 3 beds, each 53.5 ft. long. Standard 64-inch beds with 4 rows of plants per bed and 3 lines of drip tape were used. Beds were planted at two-week intervals: 26 Oct, 9 Nov, 23 Nov 2022. Each bed was planted with four plots of ‘Monterey’ and four plots of ‘Fronteras’ (20 plants/plot). Plug plants were produced at North Carolina State University’s nursery and shipped overnight to Cal Poly and planted in the field the next day. First harvest was 13 Apr 2023 when the first fully red fruit were observed. Fruit were harvested, counted, and weighed twice weekly. The trial was completed 8 Aug 2023 and replicated in the 2024 growing season.

The aims of the federal initiative Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) are multifaceted: 1) Foster responsible management of the nation's natural resources through the dissemination of location-specific, regional, and sustainable agricultural and ranching techniques, 2) Improve the livelihoods of farmers and ranchers, 3) Safeguard the well-being of individuals involved in food and agricultural systems by reducing reliance on harmful substances, 4) Encourage agricultural variety and resilience, and 5) Assess the local economic, social, and environmental impacts of adopting sustainable agricultural practices. To achieve these goals, SARE offers numerous grant opportunities for research projects, catering to farmers, ranchers, non-governmental organizations, and universities. SARE operates across four regions within the United States. New Mexico is in the Western region (WSARE) which is composed of individual state professional development programs in the area’s 13 states and 4 Pacific Island protectorates. In 2023, the NM WSARE Professional Development Program coordinated a Sustainable Agriculture Summit to better prioritize research and training needs in the state. The event was held in Santa Fe, NM, USA on 30 March, with a total of 58 participants in the full-day event. Among them were 32 agriculture professionals and 26 farmers and ranchers. The event consisted of two main sessions, a panel discussion, followed by an open forum. The panel was comprised of past Western SARE grant recipients and individuals who had submitted proposals, they provided overviews of their projects. Following the panel, summit participants engaged in a brainstorming session to identify critical sustainable agriculture project needs for producers in NM, focusing on research and training needs not previously emphasized in past funding. The priority areas identified by the participants were, in order of importance, 1) Irrigation/water use efficiency, 2) Farm economics, direct markets, and direct sales, 3) Non-traditional production, 4) Pest management, 5) Labor aids and technology adaptation, and 6) Generational transfer of farms and ranches. Each of these priorities was clearly outlined, and potential projects were identified accordingly. The outcomes of this summit were communicated to WSARE, the NM Department of Agriculture, and other funding agencies, offering valuable feedback to guide future proposals and funding initiatives in NM.