The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) awarded a $727,981 project grant to New Mexico State University (NMSU) to develop advanced technologies for robot-enabled smart, sustainable, and eco-friendly farming. The key objectives are to establish a team of cooperative robots with high autonomy to perform various agricultural tasks during planting, cultivation, and harvesting to enhance productivity and address challenges like water scarcity and...
This Project Grant award, totaling $749,962 and funded by the USDA's Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program (CFDA 10.310), aims to train a skilled and motivated group of 60 undergraduate students in emerging agricultural and food production technologies over a 3-year period. The key focus areas include robotics/automation, AI, systems/synthetic biology, bioprocessing, and process simulation. The lead awardee, Kansas State University, will collaborate with several sub-awardees,...
This $750,000 project grant was awarded on June 15, 2023 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program (CFDA 10.310). The grant supports a 5-year effort by Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, a Hispanic-serving institution, to prepare 40 undergraduate students (8 per year) in STEM fields, especially Hispanics and women, with hands-on training and research experience in innovative...
This $649,335 Project Grant award from the Department of Agriculture's Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program (CFDA 10.310) was made to Mississippi State University. The grant aims to gain a detailed understanding of small farms' needs, attitudes, and concerns towards agricultural autonomy (A2) technologies, investigate the potential social and economic impacts, and recommend strategies to improve A2 adoption by small farms. The research will include a comprehensive survey of A2...
This Project Grant award for $300,000 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (CFDA 10.310) aims to develop a robotic precision spraying system to improve the sustainability of small fruit crop production in the United States. The key deliverables include designing and evaluating an unmanned ground robot-based sprayer that can autonomously apply pesticides based on canopy density, with the goal of significantly reducing...
This Project Grant from the United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture will fund $649,723 for research to characterize and map genes controlling fruit firmness and locule gel in the Texas A&M inbred tomato line TAM-SP18-157. The goal is to utilize these genes in cultivar development to promote local production of high-quality tomatoes with exceptional traits like firmness and lack of locule gel leakage. This research aims to deliver tomatoes with...
This $600,969 Project Grant award from the United States Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (CFDA 10.310 - Agriculture and Food Research Initiative) supports the development of an "Electroponics" system for the precision delivery of water and agrichemicals to crops. The project aims to address challenges posed by climate change and population growth, including water scarcity and inefficient agrichemical application, through an interdisciplinary...
This federal Project Grant award of $740,000 from the USDA's Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program supports the development of a dynamic in-field phenotyping system to monitor disease-related traits in tomato plants across multiple scales and environments. The goal is to expedite genomic research and improve disease-management strategies for crop production. The project will be conducted by North Carolina State University, a prominent USDA contractor and grantee, over a...
This $3,531,686 Project Grant, awarded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture under the Specialty Crop Research Initiative (CFDA 10.309) program, is intended to develop and transfer an automated and integrated mobile system (AIMS) for commercial harvest, in-field pre-sorting, and quality recording of harvested apples. The project aims to leverage recent progress in robotic harvesting and pre-sorting technologies to alleviate labor shortages and...
This Project Grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (CFDA 10.310 - Agriculture and Food Research Initiative) provides $728,000 to leverage generative AI to develop and deploy customizable aerial robots for multi-scale and multi-type field data collection in agricultural settings. The project aims to enable real-time data processing and analytics to offer on-demand crop information to stakeholders, focusing on applications such as...