In this November 2024 video, USDA Agricultural Research Service research ecologist Dr. Steven Mirsky talks about the need for advanced robotics, machine learning, and other artificial intelligence tools to ensure a growing U.S. agriculture. Mirsky notes that scientists are well positioned to lead the revolution in building robust, open-source image recognition pipelines that can train machines to identify and target individual plants or pests rapidly and enable site-specific solutions to agricultural problems. The vital need for these advanced tools grows as the agricultural workforce continues to shrink.

In November 2022, the University of Vermont’s Food Systems Research Center (FSRC) announced the awardees of its Gene x Environment x Management (GEM) grants. PSA’s Heather Darby won for her research on corn varieties that are culturally significant to indigenous communities native to the Northeast.