Teaming for Interdisciplinary Research Pre-Seed Program

Modern agriculture faces the challenge of providing nutritious food for a growing global population while minimizing environmental impact, and that can only be accomplished with modern farming techniques. In this context, Precision Agriculture (PA) is an advanced farming approach that utilizes technology and data to optimize agricultural practices, enhancing resource use efficiency and reducing waste. Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) involves tightly regulating the growing conditions within enclosed structures like greenhouses or vertical farms to maximize crop yield and resource use efficiency. However, these areas are often separated as if field and indoor agriculture are distinct entities.
Even though the production environments are different, these spaces share the same challenges of fertilization, watering, pest and disease pressure, and harvesting and could benefit from developing imaging and cultivation technologies that could be scaled to different industries to increase adoption and maximize the benefits of investing local, county, state and federal fundings into research, development, and outreach. This collaborative framework aims to comprehensively connect people from PA and CEA in targeted initiatives to reduce research overlapping and increase the opportunities to bring dollars to each program while expanding the UGA IIPA visibility and leveraging our ability to secure funding as a group and contribute to Georgia agriculture.
This group will discuss strategies to comprehensively analyze leafy greens grown in outdoor, greenhouse, and vertical farm environments using production, imaging, and analytical tools such as machine learning for plant growth rate tracking and early identification of growth-limiting variables. These tools can assist in expediting the decision-making process of irrigation, fertilization, pest and disease control, and harvesting based on in-house knowledge.
We will organize a series of meetings to foster collaboration (n = 5). In the first meeting, we are integrating the research groups on a day-long seminar with 15-minute presentations of our graduate students to better understand the areas for cooperation. Next, we will identify calls for proposals that can entertain a grant and start having in-person working meetings to craft a document for submission at the end of FY 2024. These oriented activities will have working time devoted to proposal writing and will be led by the PI, Dr. Rhuanito Ferrarezi, serving not only as a tool to network and discuss ways to integrate this multitude of professionals but to leave with a meaningful product to bring research, education, and outreach support to the university and the IIPA.

Team Lead

Rhuanito Ferrarezi
rhuan@uga.edu
College: College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
Department: Horticulture 

Team Members

Leonardo Bastos
College: College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
Department: Crops & Soil Sciences

Gregory Colson
College: College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
Department: Agriculture & Applied Economics

Lorena Lacerda
College: College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
Department: Crops & Soil Sciences

Guoyu Lu
College: College of Engineering
Department: School of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Md Sultan Mahmud
College: College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
Department: Plant Pathology

Andrew Ogden
College: College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
Department: Horticulture

Luan Oliveira
College: College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
Department: Horticulture

Erich Schoeller
College: College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
Department: Entomology

Joonhyuk Sun
College: College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
Department: Food Science & Technology

Kuan Qin
College: College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
Department: Horticulture