Fancy yourself a botanist but don’t know plant diseases from your own big toe? New technology coming out of Iowa State University will soon let you diagnose crop disease like a pro!
The AI program created by the team can identify a range of common stresses in soybeans and help improve plant health for farmers, all from a smartphone. The program runs off 25,000 images of soybeans suffering from various stressors like diseases, nutrient loss, herbicide infection and more. Farmers usually have to monitor their crops manually and can waste a lot of their time but this new technology could put efficiencies back into the supply chain.
“We want this technology to allow machines to see with the eyes of an experienced plant breeder,” Singh says. “This is a prime example of how artificial intelligence can be applied to agriculture, It can provide more automation and more efficiency than the traditional way of diagnosing these stresses.”
We hope this technology can be implemented for end users too because if you are anything like me, killing off plants is way too easy.
This article was featured in Issue #1 of the Into the Void Science Magazine. Read the whole magazine for free by clicking on the image below
