At the end of each growing season, we harvest what we’ve sown and tally what we’ve reaped. At the North Carolina Plant Sciences Initiative, we start by counting the discoveries we’ve made, the technologies we’ve developed and the students we’ve trained.
And then we dig deeper.
We ask, have we opened doors of opportunity for our students? Have we made farming more efficient and productive? Have we helped improve the environment and the prospects for food security for a fast-growing world population?
In these pages we share our 2024 progress toward those ends.
With you — our stakeholders in agriculture, industry, government and academia — we are hitting our stride.
Our researchers have gained confidence, familiarity and acuity with breaking down disciplinary walls to bring about impactful, problem-solving progress. And our growing network of North Carolina Cooperative Extension agents have worked to ensure the transformative technologies coming out of that interdisciplinary research meet the agricultural users’ needs.
As we head into the 2025 growing season, we will continue collaborating with farmers and others to put these promising technologies to work. At the same time, we’ll continue to fill the talent and research development pipelines so essential to making a sustainable and unmistakable difference in the lives and livelihoods of the people in North Carolina and beyond.
Adrian Percy Executive Director, N.C. PSI
Photo by Becky Kirkland
Precision Sensors: Innovating Ag’s Future
The earlier growers can identify the presence of plant stress and its causes, the better protection they can provide. That’s one reason N.C. PSI researchers are developing state-of-the-art sensors that work before plants show signs of stress. PSI-developed agricultural sensors also are being used for an array of other purposes, including grading produce for market and providing plant breeders with data that can enhance their work.
WolfSens Designed to Save Farmers Dollars and Cents
NC State researchers have put two advanced sensors on the fast track to market. The sensors alert growers to the presence of disease by detecting volatile organic compounds (VOCs), gases that plants naturally emit. By measuring the type and concentration of VOCs that the plant releases, farmers can then determine whether a plant has a disease and, if so, which disease.
One of the sensors is a wearable electronic patch that provides continuous, real-time detection of a plant’s health. When attached to a leaf, the patch can detect plant VOCs induced by viral or fungal infections. The patch can also alert growers of other stresses, such as overwatering, drought conditions, lack of light or high salt concentrations in irrigation water. Tests showed that it detected tomato spotted wilt virus over a week before any symptoms appeared.
The team also created a portable sensor that uses a printed strip of paper to measure VOCs and changes color depending on the presence of disease. The colorimetric sensor uses a handheld device plugged into a smartphone, making it a convenient option for use in the field and greenhouses alike. The sensor detects and distinguishes tomato late blight from two fungal pathogens that produce similar symptoms. The researchers showed they could detect the pathogen Phytophthora infestans in tomato leaves with greater than 95% accuracy.
With a grant from the National Science Foundation, the research has evolved into the Wearable Olfactory Sensing project, or WolfSens. Engineers, chemists, material scientists, biologists and data scientists are working with growers, private companies and government agencies to finetune both technologies to meet users’ most urgent needs.
“This NSF grant will allow us to see how far we can go with technology and whether we can put it into the hands of growers,” says Qingshan Wei, an associate professor in NC State’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, member of the N.C. PSI faculty and WolfSens leader.
Early detection systems like WolfSens allow growers to take targeted action to protect their crops earlier than ever, saving crops from what would otherwise be economically devastating diseases.
Photos by Becky Kirkland
Sensors for real-time soil testing
Measuring methane
When Hoofprint Biome founders Kathryn Polkoff and Scott Collins needed a way to accurately measure the hydrogen, carbon dioxide and methane in cow stomachs, they tapped into N.C. PSI’s sensor development expertise.
Headquartered in the Plant Sciences Building, the startup company has discovered enzymes that naturally eliminate emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas, from cattle. With these enzymes, they are now developing a scalable, low-cost solution that both reduces emissions and increases yield.
N.C. PSI Makerspace Director
Andrea Monteza (left) created a sensor that measures the gases every 30 minutes, then relays the data to the internet. The system is key to measuring the effectiveness of Hoofprint Biome’s solution.
As Polkoff (right) explains, “I can now log into my laptop from anywhere to monitor methane concentration continuously from each of the cows wandering in the pasture. This capability is something that sets NC State apart from anywhere in the world.”
Doctoral student Riley Lawson has helped propel the work of the N.C. PSI’s Fertilizer of the Future team toward the project’s goals. She’s developing an in-field sensor that can deliver soil nutrient concentration data to users in real-time, as opposed to the week or more it can take to get results from conventional soil samples. Ultimately, the sensor could be incorporated into growers’ existing fertilizer systems and used to deliver faster management recommendations.
Lawson, who is advised by Chadi Sayde, of NC State’s Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, and Amy Grunden, of the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, received a prestigious Fulbright Award to study in France in 2024.
Scientific papers published up 14%
349 papers by 62 affiliated faculty
Photo by Gregory Hedgepeth
Photos by Marc Hall
Big Data for Better Decisions
As data science advances our knowledge about plants and soils, farming is becoming smarter and more efficient than ever. The N.C. PSI has emerged at the forefront of using data science in agriculture.
Power Partnership
A new partnership is putting data analytics to work for North Carolina’s $100B+ agriculture and agribusiness sector. In 2023-24, the General Assembly provided funding for the N.C. Ag Analytics Platform, a partnership with NC State, North Carolina A&T State University and SAS.
The goal is to enhance agricultural research, accelerate innovation and support future grant opportunities that impact the state’s food, fiber and forestry industries.
The collaboration builds on the success of previous work between SAS and the N.C. PSI to use data and in-field sensors to detect plant disease and to use computer-vision software to boost the profitability of sweetpotatoes. The N.C. PSI is leading NC State’s contributions to the partnership.
“We
see this public-private partnership as an opportunity to serve agriculture in an innovative way — unlocking information, insights and new approaches to benefit our state’s growers, producers and researchers."
Brent Jackson, N.C. Senator, Autryville
Cranos Williams, director of the Data-Driven Plant Sciences research platform of the N.C. PSI. Photo by Becky Kirkland
Seeing the bigger picture
With drone-captured images like this one, 2023-24 Norma L. Trolinder N.C. PSI Graduate Student Award winner Weilong He is training machine learning models that quantify leaf number, size, shape and orientation — important information for plant breeders.
Getting such fast, accurate data could take some of the tedium out of breeders’ work, allowing them to focus on the bigger picture: delivering improved varieties faster.
Toward data-driven soybean planting
Informed by thousands of data points from NC State University field trials conducted statewide over five years, BeanPACK is a free open-source, webbased program that will allow the state’s 5,000 soybean growers to pinpoint their location and get site-specific recommendations for planting dates and maturity groups. BeanPACK is short for SoyBEAN Planting Analytics and Customized Knowledge.
In North Carolina, one-size-fits-all recommendations don’t always yield the best results, said N.C. PSI Platform Director for Extension, Outreach and Engagement Rachel Vann.
“There are risks of planting too early in our environment, and there are risks of planting too late, and I think that this tool will help growers make decisions in the optimal range — not too early, not too late,” Vann said.
BeanPACK was released in time to inform 2025 planting decisions.
Project funding came from the North Carolina Soybean Producers Association, the N.C. PSI and the NC State Data Science and AI Academy.
“The tool is loaded with information and will assist growers in reaching the next level on soybean yields.”
Producer John Fleming of Tarboro
Photo by Weilong He
Photo by Marc Hall
NC State Extension soybean specialist Rachel Vann (left) conducted the large field trials on farms from the foothills to the coast, with the support of her team, including DJ Stokes (right).
Advancing AI for Ag
New tools and projects help position the N.C. PSI to help producers put artificial intelligence to use for increased agricultural yields, efficiency and sustainability.
Grace Hopper Meets the BenchBot
A robot known as BenchBot 3.0 and a supercomputer named for computer science pioneer Grace Hopper are expanding the N.C. PSI’s artificial intelligence capabilities.
One of the NVIDIA Grace Hopper 200’s first tasks will be to begin making sense of the half million plant photos that BenchBot will take as it passes repeatedly over 500 pots of different plant species. Those photos will help feed what N.C. PSI Platform Director for Resilient Agriculture Chris Reberg-Horton says will be the world’s largest open-source agricultural image repository.
Reberg-Horton, of NC State’s Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, and his colleagues in the Precision Sustainable Agriculture network will use the collected photos to develop tools that can help farmers make all kinds of decisions about their crops: when and where to harvest, spray for weeds or insects, fertilize and more.
Transitioning from photos to those applications will take powerful AI, and the NVIDIA Grace Hopper, with its ability to handle five terabytes of data per second, is just the right tool. The powerful computer enables teams working on interdisciplinary plant sciences research to take on large datasets, like the image repository, to make more complex models and come up with solutions faster than ever.
The images the BenchBot collects will help overcome a bottleneck in fully realizing the concept of precision farming. In precision farming, producers deliver exactly what a plant needs, precisely when and where and in what amounts it’s needed. For example, rather than spraying an entire field for weeds, which would be expensive, they could spray just the areas where weeds are a problem. That would protect crops, limit chemical use and safeguard the environment from excess application.
While AI has become controversial, its rapid development is pushing precision farming technology ahead faster than ever, says Jevon Smith, N.C. PSI’s research computing manager: “AI applications in the agriculture sector include increasing yields, reducing waste, helping reduce carbon emissions, and more. It can be used for great good.”
Left: Mark Funderburk, a design engineer in NC State’s Precision Sustainable Agriculture Lab, guided efforts to build the BenchBot’s hardware.
Below: Chris Reberg-Horton, with research associate Esleyther Henriquez, is using the BenchBot to build the world’s largest agricultural image repository. The photo collection will be used to create farm decision-making tools.
Bottom left: Cambridge Computing awarded the N.C. PSI a seed grant for the Grace Hopper 200, a supercomputer that will be used to develop smart tools for agriculture. Pictured: Jevon Smith.
“The Grace Hopper gives us the capability to train even larger-scale models to become more accurate and more predictive in nature and come up with solutions to more complicated challenges.”
Jevon Smith
N.C. PSI research computing manager
Realizing the promise of artificial intelligence, data analytics and related fields, the N.C. PSI provides opportunities for graduate students to enter the workforce ready to use them to solve agricultural challenges. In 2024:
Neha Jagtap, second from left, spent her summer in California with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service GrainGenes Team. Her role: helping develop a search tool to aid plant breeders and others.
GRAD-AI D FORAG NC STATE UNIVERSITY
Plant-parasitic nematodes live in soil and attack plant roots, leading to poor growth and plant death. To choose the right strategy to prevent or reduce losses caused by these tiny threadworms, farmers need to know which types are present in their fields and how many there are.
That requires time-consuming testing by specialized laboratories, like the one run by the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Right now, it can take weeks for farmers to get results.
With the help of nematode specialist Adrienne Gorny, artificial intelligence expert and N.C. PSI faculty member Edgar Lobaton is using photographs to train AI to help diagnosticians identify the Southeast’s Top 25 nematodes and count them. Their artificial intelligence tool is expected to be ready in 2025.
Testing laboratories could use their tool for preliminary diagnosis to speed the work of scientists who now do the task by examining samples under microscopes.
Diagnosticians will still be needed to confirm test results, but with the aid of AI, they’ll be able to deliver faster
> Education and Workforce Development Platform Director Terri Long won a $3 million National Science Foundation Grant for GRAD-AID for Ag. The program will give highly motivated doctoral students the chance to drive innovation in AI technologies at the intersection of basic and applied plant sciences.
> Five technology-savvy graduate students participated in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence and SCINet Internships, working with federal scientists to solve real-world agricultural research problems.
“This internship not only strengthened my technical abilities but also broadened my understanding of both the agricultural and technology sectors.”
Neha Jagtap, master’s student, Department of Computer Science
diagnoses so farmers can make timely decisions to protect against losses in cotton, peanuts, tobacco, sweetpotatoes, soybeans and other important N.C. crops.
A coalition involving the North Carolina Soybean Producers Association, N.C. Sweetpotato Commission, N.C. Cotton Producers Association, Tobacco Growers Association of North Carolina, NCDA&CS and the N.C. Farm Bureau made this project possible.
Worm wars
Courtesy of Adrienne Gorny
With a value of over $800 million in 2023, soybeans are North Carolina’s leading cash crop, and demand globally and domestically is on the rise. But so are global temperatures. Higher temperatures can increase the incidence of heat stress in the crop, harming plant growth and development.
To help farmers beat the heat problem, they need heat-tolerant varieties. Research from N.C. PSI faculty members Ross Sozzani and Anna Locke is exploring a novel approach to help screen breeding lines for heat tolerance.
Sozzani is an NC State professor of plant and microbial biology and N.C. PSI platform director for plant improvement, and Locke is a scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service.
Their research has generated in-depth heat stress data to identify biochemical markers — proteins and their corresponding phosphates — that are associated with heat-toler-
ance traits. Sozzani is creating a machine learning model to identify how the quantity of these specific markers indicates the desired traits.
“Once we understand how protein markers reflect phenotypic (or observable) plant responses, with the help of machine learning, the model should be able to accurately predict how specific varieties will tolerate heat,” Sozzani says.
The research is designed to enable technology that will allow breeders to sort through hundreds of potential soybean lines and identify promising potential crosses with strong heat tolerance faster and more effectively than they can with today’s tools.
This research was supported by soy checkoff funding from the North Carolina Soybean Producers Association and the United Soybean Board, with grants from government sources and private companies.
Beating the heat
Lirong Xiang, Zhenghua Zhang and Weilong He with the spider robot at the Central Crops Research Station in Clayton.
Research for Resilience
As the world population rises, so does the need for food, fiber and forestry products. To keep up, production must increase dramatically amid extreme weather, soil degradation, shifting disease and insect pressures, labor shortages and more. In the face of such complex challenges, N.C. PSI researchers make agriculture more resilient and sustainable.
Robots to Untangle Cucumber Disease
Cucurbit downy mildew — the worst disease affecting the U.S. cucumber crop and its cousins — might soon meet a new enemy: a six-legged spider-like robot that can make its way through dense vines, searching the air for spores of a fungus-like pathogen that causes the disease.
The N.C. PSI’s Lirong Xiang and Lina Quesada-Ocampo have joined forces in exploring ways to use technology to look for the presence of the fungi before plants show signs of infection.
Inexpensive broad-spectrum fungicides no longer work against the disease, so growers turn to expensive chemicals to stop losses. But farmers aren’t always sure which of the expensive sprays would work against the pathogen that causes the disease, explains Quesada-Ocampo, of NC State’s Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology.
She and doctoral student Mariana Prieto had existing tools at their disposal: diagnostic tests that help them understand more about the resistance of disease-causing spores to certain chemicals, plus stationary traps that capture airborne spores in fields before plants show symptoms.
The traps worked fine in a one-acre test plot, but commercial growers thought checking hundreds needed on larger farms would be too labor-intensive. Quesada-Ocampo enlisted Xiang, of the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, to design a vacuum trap that hangs on a cable from the drone and sucks spores from the air. Xiang and her students also built a robot that could carry a vacuum trap through fields without tripping.
They are working to make that robot capable of navigating autonomously, and they want to add in-field diagnostics so farmers won’t have to wait for lab test results.
“If we could reduce input costs for them and reduce disease losses for them at the same time, I would consider that a great success,” Quesada-Ocampo says.
Funding for the project has come from Pickle Packers International Inc., the NC State Chancellor’s Innovation Fund, the N.C. Biotechnology Center, the N.C. Plant Sciences Initiative and the N.C. Agricultural Foundation.
Zhenghua Zhang and Lirong Xiang with the spider robot prototype.
Mariana Prieto flies the vacuum trap-carrying drone across a cucumber plot.
Trees with red foliage were killed by Phytophthora root rot, a serious disease that has affected Fraser firs since the 1960s. Researchers are exploring genetic solutions. Photo by Adarsha Devihalli
Improving Fraser Fir Genetics
The NC State Christmas Tree Genetics Program has spent decades working to develop “elite” Fraser firs capable of withstanding climate-related impacts such as increased insect and disease outbreaks. A new $7.5 million U.S. Department of Agriculture grant is designed to propel that work farther and faster.
Justin Whitehill, a faculty member with the N.C. PSI and NC State’s Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, said that one aspect of a new project will involve creating a test to figure out familial relationships among trees and understand what their genetics can tell about a wide range of important characteristics.
“This will allow us to provide Christmas tree growers with guidance on which trees should be planted to combat
potential negative impacts — including climate change and disease — while also increasing their bottom line.”
At the same time, researchers plan to study how various fir species respond to climate change, pests and diseases. By studying the genes and traits of other species, they will identify what enables these trees to withstand disease and potentially enhance Fraser firs with the same capabilities.
The project will also examine the aroma of Fraser firs, the economics of the industry and public perceptions related to sustainability.
Ultimately, the work is expected to increase national and international competitiveness, improve consumer outlook regarding industry sustainability and reduce the impact of economic losses annually due to climate, pest and pathogen challenges.
A female Fraser fir cone contains the next generation of genetically improved Christmas trees at the Upper Mountain Research Station in Laurel Springs, North Carolina. Photo by Justin Whitehill
Plants need nitrogen to grow, but when nitrogen fertilizers are overused, they can cause algal blooms and oxygen-depleted dead zones. Excess nitrogen can also contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. N.C. PSI researchers are taking different approaches to tackling these problems.
Planted in the off-season on land where cash crops are grown, cover crops help manage soil quality, fertility, erosion and pests such as weeds and insects. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service is encouraging growers to use mixtures of species for their cover crops. But with these mixes, it can be hard for farmers to know precisely how much nitrogen fertilizer to use.
As NC State crop scientist and N.C. PSI Platform Director for Resilient Agriculture Chris Reberg-Horton explains, “Applying the right amount of the fertilizer nitrogen onto crops like corn is already tricky because soils are not uniform across a field. Cover crop mixtures can amplify that variation because legumes in the mix will supply nitrogen to the corn, while other cover crops in the mix will not.”
Reberg-Horton and his collaborators with the nationwide Precision Sustainable Agriculture network are helping farmers use low-cost technology to simplify their decision
making, allowing them to apply the right amount of fertilizer in the right locations.
Under a grant from the USDA NRCS to The Nature Conservancy, the network is working with farmers near the Chesapeake Bay to use camera systems to map multi-species cover crops. The maps are connected to a recently developed cover crop nitrogen calculator to produce variable rate “prescriptions.” The system is affordable and adaptable to farms both large and small.
Using variable-rate prescriptions on 150,000 acres will enable farmers to avoid applying an estimated 3 million pounds of nitrogen while maintaining yields, avoiding greenhouse gas emissions and improving water quality. While this research project is taking place in Maryland, it will have implications for growers nationwide. Reberg-Horton hopes to deploy the tools in North Carolina in 2026.
Nixing excess nitrates
Photo by Edwin Remsberg and USDA-SARE
Do inhibitors reduce nitrous oxide emissions from soils?
When excess nitrogen fertilizer turns into as nitrous oxide emissions and gaseous ammonia, farmers lose an expensive resource for plant growth.
With Alex Woodley, an N.C. PSI faculty member with NC State soil scientist, graduate student Doyeong Hur (pictured) is studying how well nitrification and urease inhibitors reduce these emissions from soils of Eastern North Carolina corn crops. Ideally, inhibitors work
by slowing the breakdown and conversion of applied nitrogen fertilizer, keeping it in the soil and giving plants the first crack at taking up the valuable nutrient.
While inhibitors have been shown to help with ammonia volatilization in other places, not much is known about how they work in the hot, humid conditions and coarse soils of Eastern North Carolina. This on-farm research will provide answers.
Growing Future Plant Scientists
To fill the talent pipeline for a growing plant sciences sector, the N.C. PSI offers an array of opportunities to engage and excite K-12 students about the field and the breadth and importance of related careers. In 2024, our Demo Lab hummed with activity. NC State-based summer camps brought hundreds of students to the Plant Science Building. And the educators we trained amplified our workforce development efforts by bringing new knowledge and lessons to their classrooms.
Next Stop: Exciting Careers in Agriculture
As an agriculture teacher at Clinton High School, Craig Lennon believes in giving hands-on experiences that get students out of the classroom.
“You’ve got to get them out” is how he puts it.
That’s why Lennon loaded his students on buses, traveling over 90 miles to NC State’s campus to get an up-close, hands-on look at the Plant Sciences Building and the research taking place there.
He did this not once, but once a month for an entire school year.
Lennon’s goal was to expose his students to careers in agriculture beyond farming.
“I think most of the students did not have a clue,” Lennon says. “Sampson County has such a large agriculture base, and I think a lot of them were able to see how production here can be tied directly to some of these areas of study.”
For Jaxson Smith and others in the class, the experience proved to be pivotal. It cinched his decision to pursue a higher education and a career in agronomy.
“The PSI visits allowed me to see how broad the career choices are in the agriculture field,” he says. “There are so many opportunities that I would have never thought of without this exposure.”
Lennon’s students were invited to share their experiences with the N.C. PSI with the county school board and superintendent. And in the end, the school’s FFA chapter honored Lee Ivy, the director of NC State’s Agricultural Institute, and Sarah Dinger, the N.C. PSI’s program manager for education and outreach, at its spring gathering, granting them honorary chapter membership.
“The students were really amazed at what goes at the Plant Science Building, and it’s something that they still talk about,” Lennon said. “They were excited about all the opportunities that could await them in agriculture.”
Getting hands-on
Over 80 high school students from across North Carolina engaged in hands-on activities and learned from leaders in the field of plant science during the N.C. PSI’s 2024 Plant Sciences Outreach Day.
The second annual event, which took place in the Plant Sciences Building in February, exposed students who have been traditionally underrepresented on college campuses
Teaching and learning, the N.C. PSI way
Until Justin Ingram (right) spent three weeks as a summer intern with the N.C. PSI, he knew that science is vital to farming, but his ideas were vague.
As part of NC State’s prestigious Kenan Fellows Program for Teacher Leadership, Ingram worked with the N.C. PSI’s Sarah Dinger (left). The experience, Ingram says, opened his eyes to how high-tech agriculture has become and how diverse its related off-farm career opportunities are. He’s hoping to bring what he learned back to his county in ways that benefit the 75 teachers he supports as a science teaching and learning specialist with Johnston County Schools.
K-12 Student Visitors to the N.C. PSI Demo Lab in FY 2023-24 973
to ways plant science is addressing some of the most pressing challenges facing the world today.
The N.C. PSI’s Education and Workforce Development Platform partnered with NC State’s College Advising Corps, TRIO and Juntos programs to carry out the event. It’s just one of the ways the N.C. PSI collaborates with schools, universities and other organizations to develop the next generation of problem solvers in agriculture.
“Educators open doors for students to see themselves in science and agriculture. Part of our role at the PSI is to first open the door for educators.”
Sarah Dinger, N.C. PSI program manager for education and outreach
Training Tomorrow’s Talent
NC State graduate and undergraduate students shape the future of plant sciences as they come together under the N.C. PSI umbrella. Though they study different disciplines — from plant sciences to engineering to geospatial analytics — they are united in their quest to make agriculture, and the world, better.
‘A Meaningful Impact’
Artificial intelligence and data analytics promise to open new opportunities for agriculture, and through a project known as SAPLINGS, the N.C. PSI is preparing workforce-ready students to lead the way.
Led by North Carolina A&T State University, SAPLINGS is an $18.1 million, five-year U.S. Department of Agriculture-funded program aimed at growing the number of underrepresented minority students in food, agriculture, natural resources and human sciences.
NC State is among eight universities engaged in SAPLINGS, and N.C. PSI Platform Director of Data-Driven Plant Sciences Cranos Williams leads NC State’s SAPLING efforts.
Each year, two doctoral students are awarded a stipend and additional funds for tuition. In addition, four undergraduates receive paid AI-in-Ag research opportunities, with one slot specifically targeting an undergrad from NC A&T who will conduct research at NC State. This year, an undergraduate intern has also worked with N.C. PSI’s Makerspace.
Through SAPLINGS, NC State senior Evelynn Wilcox, who’s pursuing a biological engineering degree, is learning more about deep learning models as she finetunes one model for disease detection in tomato plants.
The SAPLINGS experience, she says, has allowed her “to contribute to a cutting-edge field with the potential to make a meaningful impact for researchers and growers” — something she hopes to continue to do as she prepares for a career focused on developing innovative and accessible agricultural technologies.
Scholarly pursuits
Two NC State University doctoral students pursuing research aimed at plant disease detection won the 2024-25 Norma L. Trolinder N.C. PSI Graduate Student Endowment Awards. Mariana Prieto Torres (left), explores the use of agricultural technology to detect a devastating disease in cucurbit crops, like cucumber and squash. Meanwhile, Sina Jamalzadegan (right) focuses on detecting human and plant diseases using artificial intelligence, chemical engineering and biology.
Doctoral student Leticia Santos (right) and undergraduate Keller Virgilio collaborate on a project to use artificial intelligence to estimate crop residue cover across the Delmarva Peninsula.
Photo by Alexandra Goodnight
Hackathon: creating cutting-edge ag tech
Taking on real-world challenges related to sensors, artificial intelligence and more, nearly 50 NC State University undergraduate and students and postdoctoral scholars spent a fall weekend competing in the N.C. Plant Sciences Initiative’s fourth annual Hackathon.
The Hackathon is designed to help students develop critical interdisciplinary skills like computer coding, design, and project management while gaining exposure to industry experts, building professional networks, and enhancing their resumes with practical experience.
Bridging disciplines
The N.C. PSI BRIDGE Symposium drew nine pairs of graduate students and postdoctoral scholars from 12 university departments. With projects ranging from artificial intelligence for improved strawberry production to employing quantum computing for drug discovery, they presented strategies for bringing different fields together for research to benefit the environment and humanity. Thanks to symposium judges from BASF, Bayer, Cooperative Extension, Elo Life Sciences, Hoofprint Biome, Novozymes and SAS.
Science escapes
Over 1,000 NC State students and others took part in a Bayer LEAPS Escape Game in April. The N.C. PSI and the Office of University Interdisciplinary Programs partnered with Bayer to bring the 30-minute team-building event to campus. Participants solved an escape room challenge using skills they will one day use in scientific careers.
"Exposure to successful interdisciplinary research not only offers young scholars concrete examples but also highlights potential applications for their own future research projects.”
Harleen Kaur Sandhu, a BRIDGE symposium winner and postdoctoral researcher, Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering
Agents of Change
Extension agents working with the N.C. PSI are sharpening the initiative’s research and technology development efforts and bringing them into focus for farmers across North Carolina.
A Two-Way Bridge
Extension agents are NC State's frontline in interacting with growers, helping them understand and use research-based knowledge and technology on their farms and conveying their needs to university researchers and Extension specialists who provide solutions. Twenty-six agents now work closely with the N.C. PSI.
The network’s members represent North Carolina’s diverse geography and crop production systems. Rachel Vann leads the network as the N.C. PSI’s platform director for Extension, outreach and engagement. The network was started as a way to leverage the state’s robust Extension system to accelerate technology development.
The idea, Vann says, was to incorporate applied expertise and a high level of connectivity to growers during the technology development pipeline.
“Not only would this help PSI research teams get technology out faster, but it would also help Extension agents evolve their skillsets and knowledge on cutting-edge innovation from NC State,” she says.
The network, formed in 2023 and expanded in 2024, has already helped refine a cover crops tool and other projects related to precision pest ecology, advanced disease diagnostics, sensor development for stress and digital agriculture.
A May workshop introduced agents to ag tech startup companies involved with the N.C. PSI and in Research Triangle Park.
The N.C. Plant Science Initiative gratefully acknowledges the North Carolina Tobacco Trust Fund Commission, N.C. Soybean Producers Association, Corn Growers Association of North Carolina, N.C. Small Grain Growers Association and David Peele for their support of the Extension Agent Network.
“Serving with the N.C. PSI has allowed me to provide a unique insight to some of my growers regarding new and emerging technologies, such as a software-based cover crop selector tool, which they now use and consult in their day-to-day operations.”
Morgan Menaker
Extension field crops agent, Union County
Extension’s Ellen Owens of Pasquotank County, intern Parker Riley, Dylan Lilley of Hertford County and Austin Brown of Camden County test the Plantmap 3D system, which consists of inexpensive camera systems that are used to map the species, biomass, and densities of weeds, cover crops and cash crops. These programs use off-the-shelf cameras that are handheld, mounted onto the tractor, or placed across large spray booms to allow producers to make informed management decisions about fertility and weeds after a cover crop has been grown.
Photo by Austin Brown
“Being part of the network has exposed me to a variety of technologies that have the capacity to improve the lives of producers in my area. Additionally, it has deeply strengthened my network with other individuals and organizations existing in support of modern agricultural practices.” — Kathryn Holmes, Extension agriculture agent, Rockingham County
Kathryn Holmes
Extension agriculture agent, Rockingham County
Agent spotlight: Mikayla Berryhill
The prospect of getting to explain plant science and technology to the farmers for whom it matters most drew Mikayla Berryhill to a career with North Carolina Cooperative Extension four years ago. Now, with the network of agents working with the N.C. PSI, she gets to bring growers into the interdisciplinary research that leads to new agricultural knowledge and technology.
Berryhill, who serves field crops farmers in Person and Granville counties, has seen both researchers and growers benefit from the network. She was part of one of the network’s first projects: helping beta-test a web-based decision support tool with farmers. The tool is designed to help them use information specific to their farm to help them increase yields and efficiency by adopting cover crops.
Based on suggestions that Berryhill passed along from growers who tested the tool, researchers ended up revising the tool significantly to make it more useful. “It was a cool thing,” she says, “to be able to go out to farmers and show them the software, for them to tell me changes they wanted to see, and then be able to come back a few months later and say, ‘Hey, you remember that change you suggested? It happened.’”
Courtesy of Mikayla Berryhill
Cooperative Extension agents representing 37 counties across North Carolina work with the N.C. PSI.
Seeding Startups
The N.C. PSI’s entrepreneurship program provides expertise and resources to help emerging companies bring problem-solving agricultural technologies to the marketplace.
Companies involved in Seed2Grow are eligible to apply for lab and office space in the initiative’s 2,500-square-foot incubator, opened in April.
Seed2Grow Takes Shape
The N.C. PSI launched the Seed2Grow program in 2024 to help researchers, alumni and others translate their ideas and discoveries into products and services that benefit agriculture.
Through the program, six startup companies are tapping university and agricultural technology industry expertise and resources.
Adrian Percy, N.C. PSI’s executive director, says that nurturing new companies aligns with the initiative’s efforts to give North Carolina an economic advantage through agriculture and agricultural technology. “Some of these small companies will evolve and mature into larger companies that will hire people that will be producing products that benefit not just our citizens in North Carolina, but also more broadly across the U.S. and even globally.”
Eligibility and benefits
To be eligible for Seed2Grow, companies must have licensed NC State intellectual property, have ongoing sponsored research projects with the university or be owned by university faculty members, postdoctoral researchers or students or by alumni who graduated less than two years before they apply.
Admitted companies gain access to the building and networking opportunities, and from a new commercialization advisory council, they get highlevel mentoring and assistance with business plan development and marketing.
Growers and students benefit, too
Steve Markham, council co-director and NC State Goodnight Distinguished Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurism says that bringing university innovation into the marketplace benefits not only the companies but also growers, many of whom operate on tight margins, where every gain in innovation, efficiency and labor reduction count.
Seed2Grow member companies are Hoofprint Biome, Elysia Creative Biology, Raleigh Biosciences, Soteria Formulations Inc., Flip Biosystems and Benanova.
Eliminating methane emissions
Two Seed2Grow companies are taking different approaches to reducing or eliminating emissions of methane from cattle. Cows produce methane through the process of fermentation that takes place in a part of the cow’s stomach known as the rumen, and the gas is released in their burps. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas.
Hoofprint Biome, founded by Scott Collins and Kathryn Polkoff, has discovered enzymes that naturally eliminate methane emissions from cattle. With these enzymes, they are now developing a scalable, low-cost solution that both reduces emissions and increases cattle productivity.
Being part of Seed2Grow “gives me a way to keep meeting with professors and see new research that is coming out,” Hornstein says. “When you are starting out in private industry, you don’t know how much of a wall can be there between new science and private work. Being here breaks down that wall.”
Eli Hornstein of Elysia Creative Biology is genetically engineering plants that could practically eliminate methane emissions from cows that eat them.
Photo by Jiyoung Park
Charting a Future
To develop problem-solving technology that works outside the lab, N.C. PSI engages stakeholders throughout the research and development process. Two 2024 workshops are kickstarting new interdisciplinary research into automation for labor efficiency.
Connecting Across Commodities
When the N.C. PSI asked leaders from over 25 of the state’s agricultural and commodity groups to identify the greatest challenges facing growers, labor came out at the top of the list. Those leaders came together for a one-day workshop at the Plant Sciences Building in June to share insights into labor and the other big challenges facing the producers they represent.
Workshop participants represented the broad range of North Carolina’s crop and livestock industries — from soybean and sweetpotato farmers to pork and cattle producers to those involved in beekeeping and Christmas tree production. Leaders from the Golden LEAF Foundation, the North Carolina Farm Bureau and the North Carolina Grange also attended.
N.C. Chamber General Counsel and Legal Institute President Ray Starling facilitated the workshop, helping participants find common ground. In the end, participants voted on ideas for future research that cut across multiple commodities. Automation for labor efficiency, early detection of pests and pathogens and production for human and animal health/ differentiated value emerging as top vote-getters.
To kickstart research to automate more farm tasks, 48 university faculty members from six colleges joined agricultural industry leaders and others in an October Connecting2Grow: Automation in Ag workshop.
Participants worked in interdisciplinary teams to develop research and technology development project proposals to aid growers in North Carolina and beyond.
Participants in the June workshop broke into small groups to reflect on growers’ challenges and discuss top ideas for N.C. PSI research to address them.
A word cloud captured top N.C. farmer concerns from a survey of agricultural leaders.
Partnerships for Progress
Partnerships with industry, government and academia strengthen N.C. PSI research, education and extension outreach programs through financial support, shared expertise and collaboration.
Workshops Help Inform Regulatory Reform
With agricultural technology companies developing more cropprotecting treatments using techniques such as CRISPR genome editing, the time is right for reform of federal policies that govern these products, and the N.C. PSI-affiliated Center for Excellence in Regulatory Science in Agriculture is at the forefront of helping inform such efforts.
Center Director Danesha Seth Carley co-led three CERSA workshops over the past two years that brought together representatives of academia, industry and the federal government to discuss regulation of genome-edited microbial products and to share concerns and recommendations with the regulatory agencies. Genome editing involves using technologies such as CRISPR to change an organism’s DNA.
In May 2024, not long after the CERSA workshops wrapped up, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration released a plan to update, streamline and clarify their regulations and oversight mechanisms for the products of biotechnology, including biological products for agriculture.
As Randy Deinhammer, global head of regulatory affairs for plant biosolutions for Novonesis North America, says, “I think that it’s really been because of CERSA’s continued involvement and together with industry … that we’ve moved the topic of existing regulations around genome-edited organisms so far and so quickly.”
“At a time of disruptive innovation, we need to update regulatory frameworks to keep up with the science and enable the industrial pursuit of next-generation products, while ensuring we meet the high regulatory standards that drive consumer acceptance and confidence.”
Rodolphe Barrangou, Todd R. Klaenhammer Distinguished Professor in NC State Department of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences
Innovation Hub Grows
The N.C. PSI’s Innovation Hub is where corporate partners join us in the Plant Sciences Building. Six new companies — Agerpoint, Oerth Bio, Envu, Nufarm, Syngenta and UPL Ltd. — have joined premier members SAS, Bayer, BASF and Novonesis to gain access to interdisciplinary expertise and emerging talent.
Courtesy Flad Architects
Help Us Future-Proof Farming
At the North Carolina Plant Sciences Initiative, we think big.
We take on some of the most substantial challenges in agriculture, all in the interest of ensuring a safe, affordable, nutritious supply of food, fuel and fiber.
Your support speeds our progress and deepens our impact. Think of all the good we can do together.
To learn more about opportunities for support, contact Dinah Schuster, Senior Director of Philanthropy, 919-513-8294 or daschust@ncsu.edu
