URBANA, Ill. – The University of Illinois has been awarded $4.5 million from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) through its “Systems for Monitoring and Analytics for Renewable Transportation Fuels from Agricultural Resources and Management” (SMARTFARM) program. The funding will be used to calculate farm-scale carbon credits, allowing individual farmers to understand the value of their land and practices towards carbon trading markets.

CHICAGO, Ill. -- The Discovery Partners Institute (DPI) is launching eight world-class research teams from the University of Illinois System and partner universities with more than $1 million in seed funding.

The goal is to develop these multi-disciplinary teams into international centers of excellence that will achieve significant economic and societal impact. Each nascent team is receiving $125,000 as well as administrative and grant-writing support, access to corporate partners and DPI’s downtown Chicago office. 

URBANA, Ill. -- Biofuel and bioenergy systems are integral to scenarios for displacing fossil fuel use and producing negative emissions through carbon capture and storage. But the net greenhouse gas mitigation benefit of these systems has been controversial, due to concerns around carbon losses from changes in land use and foregone sequestration benefits from alternative land uses.

URBANA, Ill. – Representing some of the most troublesome agricultural weeds, waterhemp, smooth pigweed, and Palmer amaranth impact crop production systems across the U.S. and elsewhere with ripple effects felt by economies worldwide. In a landmark study, scientists have published the most comprehensive genome information to date for all three species, marking a new era of scientific discovery toward potential solutions.   

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.

The Center for Digital Agriculture (CDA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a catalyst for collaborative research projects across engineering and agriculture. With a strong record of team-building for large long-term interdisciplinary research and education projects at the University of Illinois, CDA continues to offer a competitive seed-funding program. The newly announced collaborative projects span two or more of the Center’s initial themes: automation, data, animals and crops, and people.

URBANA, Ill. – In its 63rd year, Agronomy Day at the University of Illinois will be an event unlike any other. For the first time, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the event moves online and features recorded video presentations from College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) researchers and Extension specialists.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Crops grow dense canopies that consist of several layers of leaves—the upper layers with younger sun leaves and the lower layers with older shaded leaves that may have difficulty intercepting sunlight trickling down from the top layers.

URBANA, Ill. ­– Bird biodiversity is rapidly declining in the U.S. The overall bird population decreased by 29% since 1970, while grassland birds declined by an alarming 53%.

Valuable for so much more than flight and song, birds hold a key place in ecosystems worldwide. When bird numbers and varieties dwindle, pest populations increase and much-needed pollination decreases. Those examples alone negatively impact food production and human health.

URBANA, Ill. – University of Illinois researchers have developed a new technique to determine the fertility of sperm samples in cattle.

“This work is a part of a five-year project to develop dairy cattle that are resistant to heat and diseases in tropical areas. We want to donate these cows to developing countries to increase their food production,” said Matthew B. Wheeler, professor in the Department of Animal Sciences at Illinois.