Missouri S&T Researcher Leads International AI Project To Protect Corn And Rice Crops

A Missouri S&T researcher is leading an international effort to develop an artificial intelligence system that could help farmers better protect corn and rice crops from pests, diseases and other threats that reduce yields.

The project is one of six selected for funding through the National Science Foundation’s Advancing Innovations for Empowering NextGen Agriculture (AI-ENGAGE) initiative launched last year and brings together researchers from Missouri S&T with partner institutions in the United States, Japan, Australia and India.

“Losing crops can lead to serious economic consequences for farmers and the communities that depend on them,” says Dr. Sajal K. Das, S&T’s Daniel St. Clair Endowed Chair and a Curators’ Distinguished Professor of computer science. “By bringing together AI, robotics and advanced sensing technologies, we can provide earlier warnings to help farmers identify problems sooner and make better-informed decisions. Our goal is to develop an AI-powered system that gives farmers practical recommendations they can use throughout the growing season.”

The system Das and his team are developing will use drones, robotic ground vehicles, wireless sensors and other advanced technologies to monitor corn and rice fields. Das says it will detect pest outbreaks, crop diseases, nutrient deficiencies and water stress, forecast crop yields, and provide growers with information through a mobile application.

Researchers also will develop a digital twin platform that creates virtual models of farms, allowing growers to evaluate different management strategies before applying them in the field. The system will be tested in the United States, Australia, India and Japan under various conditions to help ensure it can be adapted for farmers in different regions.

Das says the international collaboration is significant because it allows researchers to evaluate the technology in diverse agricultural environments while drawing on expertise from multiple disciplines.

“Each of our partners brings unique expertise and different agricultural challenges to the project,” he says. “Working together allows us to develop AI tools that are more accurate, more adaptable and ultimately more useful for farmers around the world.”

The project is expected to conclude in February 2028. Joining Das as a co-principal investigator at Missouri S&T is Dr. Vishesh K. Tanwar, a senior research associate in computer science.

Das says his Ph.D. student, Amit Jha, will help build and deploy a pest detection instrument this fall for corn and other crops in Missouri and Indiana.

The project’s partner institutions include the University of Tennessee; Osaka University in Japan; the University of Melbourne in Australia; and the Indian Institute of Science, the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) Varanasi and the ICAR-National Bureau of Agricultural Insect Resources in India.