WSU is playing a vital role in connecting big data with modern farming — marrying the strength of high-tech research with the public-service mandate of a land-grant institution to help farmers at every stage, from preparing for the growing season to harvest.
“It is happening now and we are improving it further,” said Lav Khot, the director of AgWeatherNet and a professor of precision agriculture in the Department of Biological Systems Engineering with a focus on agricultural automation. “That’s where AI comes in: How can we mine the information from this data and make better management decisions? It’s really changing the game.”
“Agriculture, globally speaking, is experiencing a revolution because of how much data is being generated and gathered,” said Ananth Kalyanaraman, the director of AgAID and professor and director of the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “There’s been a deluge of data. The immediate question when there is a lot of data is what you do with it — what is the value of data? The value is the information you can get to understand what is going on in the fields.”
WSU’s role at the forefront of AI in agriculture is reflected in its leadership of AgAID, a $20 million institute established with funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture as part of the National Science Foundation’s National AI Research Institutes program. The Institute combines the efforts of multiple research institutions, industry, and government partners to address agricultural challenges in the Pacific Northwest.
