Project Grant 20226702136465

This five-year, $649,977 project grant from the United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA NIFA) Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program (CFDA 10.310) will fund research at North Carolina State University to develop an automated, repeatable process for mapping host crop species essential to forecasting the spread of invasive plant pests and pathogens. Using machine learning and publicly available imagery, the researchers will build maps of fruit and tree nut crops threatened by emerging pests and climate change to improve pest spread models. They will collaborate with USDA agencies and industry partners to iteratively develop and validate host maps and forecasts, enhance the Pest Outbreak Prediction System decision support tool, and add an alert system translating forecasts into actionable insights. The near-term forecasting system coupled with enhanced data inputs is intended to reduce costs for pest surveys and help growers identify intervention timing and locations to reduce $M in annual U.S. production losses and chemical pesticide use.