The 2018 Farm Progress Show runs Aug. 28-30 in Boone, Iowa. For more information visit FarmProgressShow.com.

By Chelsea Davis

Farmers and plant pathologists find plant diseases by scouting crops. Walking soybean fields looking for stress, disease and pests is hardly a highlight of a farmer’s summer, especially when a stressor is detected. Soon, it may not be such an unpleasant task.

A team of scientists at Iowa State University are developing new technology that speeds up and improves the accuracy of field scouting.

Danny and Arti Singh, researchers in the department of agronomy, have teamed up with Soumik Sarkar and Baskar Ganapathysubramanian, engineers in the department of mechanical engineering, and their students to display new technology at the ISU Tent.

"Scouting is a slow process, and even an experienced crop scout or pathologist can’t thoroughly and efficiently scout all the acres of a large field in a day," Arti says. "So that’s where the need arises."

Applying artificial intelligence to ag
The ISU researchers are building a data analytics and machine learning framework that will detect crop plant stresses.

The data will come from ground robots, unmanned aerial systems and satellites as well as hand-held smartphone apps.

During the 2018 Farm Progress Show, this interdisciplinary team will showcase their work.

"This is a prime example of how artificial intelligence can be applied to agriculture," Sarkar says. "It can provide more automation and efficiency than the traditional way of diagnosing these crop stresses."

Humans still involved in the process

After collecting large amounts of data, the learning-based decision systems will remove human biases and enable extremely high throughput.

However, the idea isn’t to remove humans from the equation. "The approach actually improves human capability and helps the experts make more efficient and quick decisions, and eventually improve the productivity and profitability of the entire farm," Sarkar says.

Davis is an Iowa State University communications specialist.