The AgAID Institute, a powerful coalition of technology firms and universities, including Oregon State University, is employing artificial intelligence to tackle some of the most important and difficult problems facing farmers today. The frost mitigation issue is just one of several groundbreaking projects getting focus at the new institute, where the building of a neural network to forecast the hardiness of grapes, model water and soil conditions, and best predict whether mitigation techniques should be employed before harvest, is helping farmers avoid crop loss and get that all-important sleep at night.
Formed in the 2020-21 cycle and funded via a research grant from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture in partnership with the National Science Foundation, AgAID consists of ten core members featuring Washington State University and the University of California Merced at the helm of agricultural research, Oregon State’s schools of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering, and the University of Virginia as co-managers of the AI component.
