Funded Projects (Sorted by project start date descending order)

In the face of 21st-century agricultural challenges, our mission is clear: we must produce more food, feed, and fiber for a growing population with evolving dietary preferences, while dealing with limited rural labor and agricultural land, and the need for bio-energy sources. Moreover, climate change introduces more frequent biotic and abiotic stresses. While global crop productivity has matched these challenges, we must intensify our efforts to sustain this progress. This is especially vital as we navigate the rest of the century. To address these pressing needs, our team of experts, spanning crop and livestock breeding, genetics, biochemistry, and data science, is forging ahead. We're developing innovative tools to decode the genetic basis of traits in crops like maize, soybean, sorghum, and in pigs. Our advanced statistical models, enhancing methods like GWAS, TWAS, and eQTL mapping, empower biologists to explore data in groundbreaking ways, uncovering new insights. We are bridging the gap between genetics and traits, from crop yields to Vitamin B levels in maize. Our research probes the interplay of genetics, weather, and environment using diverse data. This newfound knowledge will steer enhancements in crucial U.S. crops and livestock. Our ambitious endeavor extends beyond discovery. It entails crafting novel statistical tools to comprehend essential genes in both livestock and crops, applicable across species. Aligned with the USDA's strategic goals, our work contributes to an equitable, resilient, and prosperous U.S. agricultural system, ensuring accessible, wholesome food for all. Through education and outreach, we'll empower crop and livestock breeders and cultivate the human capital needed to fulfill these aspirations.

Water and nitrogen represent two of the most expensive inputs to agricultural systems, and two of the critical constraints on overall agricultural productivity. Today, farmers generally over apply nitrogen fertilizer, because the potential cost of over application is less than the potential cost of achieving suboptimal yields. Similarly, in farm settings water is often over applied, particularly when studies are conducted at high resolution within individual center-pivot fields. We willdesignand validatean integrated cyber-physical system to collect and integrate data from remote sensing and low-cost field deployed wearable sensors and use machine learningand mathematical modeling to guide precision water and nutrient interventions in farmer's fields. This would mean that agricultural productivity can be sustained or increased while reducing overall nitrogen fertilizer and irrigation applications. Among the many beneficial effects to society as a whole would be 1) a decrease the environmental impact of agriculture; 2) decreased competition for scarce water supplies between agriculture and growing urban centers; and 3) increased farmer profitability, improving the economic viability of rural economies.The CPS will enable fusion of a large volume of spatio-temporally distributed multi-modal information to create a data-driven decision support platform that provides actionable information on optimal agricultural managementstrategies.The team will continue to leverage and develop extensive outreach and educational activities to train the next generation of scientists, through many existing STEM programs in Iowa State University and University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

To address the challenges and opportunities of achieving sustainable genetic improvement of agricultural species, thereby enhancing the sustainability and profitability of US agriculture, the current agricultural genome to phenome initiative (AG2PI) project has built a large transdisciplinary community of researchers spanning crops and livestock, as well as integrative disciplines (e.g., engineers, data scientists, and social scientists). The overall objective of the AG2PI is to provide competitive funds to conduct AG2P research that will benefit the broader community. The project will: implement a vision for AG2P research that has been developed with community input over the past two years by providing seed grants that will help close research gaps and support new and emerging opportunities. It features a robust project management plan, involving leaders with the requisite experience in managing large complex projects (including seed grant programs), implementation plans based on best practices, and the science of team science, coupled with a robust assessment plan to refine best practices. A comprehensive and inclusive scientific advisory board, stakeholders, and partner organizations will assist the team with meeting its objectives and ensuring that its activities coordinate and complement existing AG2P programs in crops and livestock. The project will continue developing a cross-kingdom community prepared to tackle AG2P research and offer opportunities to develop novel and creative solutions to enhance our understanding of both kingdoms, for the benefit of US agriculture and society. The current AG2PI team is well positioned to accomplish these tasks to produce quick results with proven procedures and processes.

In the US, agricultural drainage infrastructure benefits >22.6 Mha of cropland and is valued at ~$100B. As a proportion of total croplands, drained croplands produce a disproportionately large amount of grain but also release a disproportionately large amount of eutrophying nutrients to aquatic ecosystems. Drainage systems include individually-owned field drains that depend on the function of community-owned main drains. Climate change and agricultural intensification are causing farmers to increase the extent and intensity of drainage leading to a pressing need to balance productivity, profitability, and environmental quality when making drainage decisions. Further, because drainage systems include individually-owned and community-owned drains, decision-making involves complex techno-economic social issues together with understanding biophysical processes and requires balancing the needs of individual farmers, drainage communities, and surrounding regions. This project will develop an integrated decision-making platform to facilitate community decision making for precise prediction and management of drainage effects on water flow, crop production, farm net returns, and nutrient loss. The platform data will be made possible by new agricultural sensors and robots, innovations in behavioral economics and analytics tools. Development of the drainage decision-making platform will be guided by farmer stakeholders—including, the Iowa and Illinois Drainage Districts Associations, a national-level agricultural drainage management coalition, and directly with farmers—forming a continuous learning environment across scientists and farmers that fosters adoption of new technologies and transfer of the research process to the next generation of scientists, engineers, and agricultural professionals.

The project will build upon a suite of biophysical and social science advances in multiple areas, including bioinspired robotic snake sensors, in-situ soil nutrient sensors, computational modeling, and socioeconomics. The snake sensors will navigate through agricultural drainage networks to generate a high spatial resolution data stream about flow rates and nitrate concentrations throughout the belowground network. The soil sensors will enable continuous monitoring of nitrate dynamics. Process-based ecohydrological models, subsurface water transport models, and multiple spatiotemporal sensor outputs will be integrated to obtain high-resolution information about distributions of water and nitrate. Biophysical scenario analyses will assist decision-making for different agricultural management scenarios to balance resource use efficiency, profitability, and environmental performance. Socioeconomic science innovations will be integrated by learning how current systems are managed in the context of various heterogeneities across individuals and drainage districts, such as demographics, farm size, and presence of wetlands, and how new information provided by the proposed infrastructure interacts with human incentives and choices and consequent policy making.

To achieve sustainable genetic improvement of agricultural species and thereby mitigate environmental impacts and enhance the sustainability and profitability of US agriculture, the expertise of a broad community of agricultural genome to phenome (AG2P) researchers must be engaged, drawing from both crop and livestock communities, as well as integrative disciplines (e.g., engineers, data scientists, economists, and social scientists). Towards this end an existing NIFA-funded project (2020-70412-32615) is assembling and preparing a transdisciplinary community to conduct AG2P research. This project is: Developing a vision for AG2P research by identifying research gaps and opportunities; fostering first steps towards the development of community solutions to these challenges and gaps; and rapidly disseminating findings to the broader community. The current project will leverage these activities by using a competitive process in coordination with NIFA to provide additional seed grants to the AG2PI community. These seed grants will identify bottlenecks and explore novel solutions to community challenges to AG2P research. The project features a robust project management plan, involving leaders with the requisite experience managing large complex projects, implementation plans based on best practices and the science of team science, coupled with a robust assessment plan to refine best practices. A comprehensive and inclusive group of scientific partner organizations (including those serving the global community), a renowned scientific advisory board, and an external stakeholder group will assist the executive team in meeting its objectives and ensuring that its activities coordinate and complement existing programs.

Our planet faces a daunting challenge: By the end of the century, world population will increase by 45%, cropland will decrease by 20% and our climate will become increasingly variable, threatening crops and putting communities at risk. We need to increase agricultural productivity by 70% to meet our growing food security needs - a challenge we are not able to meet under our current rate of progress. Now imagine a truly game-changing technology that can greatly accelerate this progress. It already exists in the form of artificial intelligence (AI). Using advanced sensor technology, scientists can create digital twins - virtual simulations that mimic real-world plants, crops and farms. For every year of biological data, digital twin-based AI systems can create hundreds of reality-based simulations that can: Streamline and revolutionize plant breeding to help scientists develop improved crop varieties that can better withstand environmental, pest and disease challenges while delivering higher yields and quality. Help farmers and their advisors adopt improved farming techniques and technologies that can boost their profits and help improve the long-term care of their critical land and soil resources. Provide governments with the insight they need to encourage and incentivize adoption of policies and practices that deliver the most benefit with the least environmental cost. Give agricultural companies the data and knowledge needed to develop more effective precision management systems and improved plant varieties that thrive with less water, fertilizer and pesticides. Drive economic development across the rural landscape through AI-inspired ventures. The leaders of the AI Institute for Resilient Agriculture (AIIRA) believe these breakthroughs - and more - can be a reality in the very near future. The Institute is bringing together AI experts with plant breeders, agronomists, geneticists and social scientists to accelerate the adaptation and use of AI-based technologies to transform agriculture to meet the needs of our world's growing population and increasingly climate-challenged food systems.

Agriculture and Rural Communities (ARA) is funded in part by the NSF award CNS-1827940 and PAWR Industry Consortium. See project website (https://arawireless.org/) for details.

To address the challenges and opportunities of achieving sustainable genetic improvement of agricultural species, thereby enhancing the sustainability and profitability of US agriculture, the expertise of a broad community of agricultural genome to phenome (AG2P) researchers must be engaged, drawing from both crop and livestock communities, as well as integrative disciplines (e.g., engineers, data scientists, economists, and social scientists). The overall objective of this AG2PI is to assemble and prepare a transdisciplinary community to conduct AG2P research. The project will: Develop a vision for AG2P research by identifying research gaps and opportunities; foster first steps towards the development of community solutions to these challenges and gaps; and rapidly disseminate findings to the broader community. Towards these ends, AG2PI will sponsor and coordinate field days, conferences, training workshops, and seed grants. AG2PI features a robust project management plan, involving leaders with the requisite experience managing large complex projects, implementation plans based on best practices and the science of team science, coupled with a robust assessment plan to refine best practices. A comprehensive and inclusive group of scientific partner organizations (including those serving the global community), a renowned scientific advisory board, and an external stakeholder group will assist the AG2PI in meeting its objectives and ensuring that its activities coordinate and complement existing programs in plant and livestock G2P. Development of a cross-kingdom community prepared to tackle AG2P research offers opportunities to develop novel and creative solutions to enhance our understanding of both kingdoms, for the benefit of US agriculture and society.