The instrumentation can carry a wide range of precision agriculture sensors for comprehensive plant and soil monitoring. By integrating multi-sensor data with artificial intelligence algorithms, the system enables the assessment of plant biotic and abiotic stresses as well as overall soil health. It can be used to detect the spatial distribution of weeds, pests, and diseases across the field, along with variations in soil nutrient status. This information supports site-specific application of fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides, pesticides, and irrigation at the appropriate locations, thereby reducing management costs and promoting more sustainable agricultural practices.

We will collaborate with faculty across multiple departments to address a wide range of crop management challenges, while also working closely with breeding programs to develop high-throughput phenotyping systems that accelerate breeding cycles.

• Precision Breeding:In collaboration with breeding programs, an artificial intelligence–powered high-throughput phenotyping system will be developed based on our robotic platform. This system will enable faster data collection while providing more accurate and consistent phenotypic measurements to support precision breeding decisions.
• Precision Crop Management: By integrating multiple precision agriculture sensors, the robotic platform can autonomously navigate agricultural fields and collect proximal sensing data. These data enable the analysis of biotic and abiotic stresses at the individual plant level, supporting site-specific crop management.

We will collaborate with faculty from multiple departments at the LSU AgCenter to further develop the robotic platform for comprehensive monitoring of crop and soil health. The goal is to reduce agricultural inputs without sacrificing yield while minimizing environmental impacts through decreased use of pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, fertilizers, and other inputs.