URBANA, Ill. – On Wednesday, the National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes announced a $20 million award to the Center for Digital Agriculture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to develop a new Artificial Intelligence for Future Agricultural Resilience, Management, and Sustainability (AIFARMS) institute.

URBANA, Ill. – Where coronavirus puts human workers at risk, robots can step in to do the job. Girish Chowdhary and his research team at the University of Illinois already have developed the robot, and they are now adapting it to current needs.

TerraSentia is a small, semi-autonomous robot that moves nimbly on the ground. A team of these robots work together, combining the speed and power of technology with the attention to detail of human labor.

URBANA, Ill. – ­Oil produced from biomass can provide a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels. But technological challenges make it difficult to scale up production and make it economically viable.

One technology known as hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) allows for production of biocrude oil from wet biomass such as algae, food waste, or animal manure. This process sidesteps costly drying procedures; however, it creates a wastewater byproduct that is considered an environmental hazard.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. —  Like many industries, big data is driving innovations in agriculture. Scientists seek to analyze thousands of plants to pinpoint genetic tweaks that can boost crop production—historically, a Herculean task. To drive progress toward higher-yielding crops, a team from the University of Illinois is revolutionizing the ability to screen plants for key traits across an entire field.

URBANA, Ill. – Dried distiller’s grains with solubles (DDGS), a co-product from corn ethanol processing, is commonly used as feed for cattle, swine and poultry. However, DDGS contains more phosphorus than the animals need. The excess ends up in manure and drains into the watershed, promoting algae production and eventually contributing to large dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico.

URBANA, Ill. – University of Illinois scientists, with help from members of the Illinois Corn Growers Association, have developed a new, scalable method for estimating crop productivity in real time. The research, published in Remote Sensing of Environment, combines field measurements, a unique in-field camera network, and high-resolution, high-frequency satellite data, providing highly accurate productivity estimates for crops across Illinois and beyond.  

URBANA, Ill. – With some reports predicting the precision agriculture market will reach $12.9 billion by 2027, there is an increasing need to develop sophisticated data-analysis solutions that can guide management decisions in real time. A new study from an interdisciplinary research group at University of Illinois offers a promising approach to efficiently and accurately process precision ag data.

Champaign, Ill. – The brightest minds in agtech will convene Wednesday, March 4 for the fifth annual AgTech Innovation Summit hosted by the University of Illinois Research Park and presented by Bayer and The Climate Corporation.

URBANA, Ill. – In the battle against herbicide-resistant weeds, farmers are increasingly eager to add non-chemical control methods to their management toolbox. Impact mills, which destroy weed seeds picked up by a combine, have been shown to kill 70-99% of weed seeds in soybeans, wheat, and other small-statured cropping systems.

URBANA, Ill. – For corn growers, the decision of when and how much nitrogen fertilizer to apply is a perennial challenge. Scientists at the University of Illinois have shown that nanosatellites known as CubeSats can detect nitrogen stress early in the season, potentially giving farmers a chance to plan in-season nitrogen fertilizer applications and alleviate nutrient stress for crops.