Teaming for Interdisciplinary Research Pre-Seed Program

Intended Research:

The major objective of this proposed research is to develop a mobile sensing system that can assist in diagnosing poultry support intervention. Fecal images will be collected from several disease challenge experiments (e.g., Salmonellosis, Newcastle Disease, Coccidiosis, and Highly-pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI)), which will be used to develop artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms for disease classification. The developed and optimal model will be embedded into mobile applications installed on smartphones. The developed system will allow poultry producers to capture fecal images on farms, process captured images in real time, and diagnose the diseases. A framework of the proposed chicken health assessment system is presented in Figure 1.

Potential impact:

The combined production value of broilers, eggs, and turkeys was $77 billion in 2022. A contemporary poultry house commonly accommodates tens of thousands of birds to maximize production efficiency, providing sufficient affordable proteins for humans. However, intensive production systems are also favorable for transmitting infectious pathogens among birds, leading to disease outbreaks and economic loss. For example, the 2015 HPAI outbreak in had led to the depopulation of more than 48 million birds, while the most recent HPAI outbreak has led to over 58 million birds being euthanized since 2022. In the United States, the prevalence of infected flocks with Salmonella is nearly 75.0-90.0%, and annual economic loss due to Salmonella infections runs from $1.2 billion to $11.6 billion, based on the estimated 1.92 million cases annually. The proposed rapid and accurate health assessment system will support timely decision-making in disease management, reduce economic loss, and enhance sustainability.

Relation to IPA:

The proposed project integrates key components of AI, sensors, computer vision, mobile sensing, and Internet of Things into existent poultry production systems, which fits the sprit of IPA for harnessing the power of technology and big data to sustainably provide for our planet’s growing population. The multidisciplinary team includes expertise in poultry science, animal welfare, precision agriculture, agriculture engineering, computer science, edge computing, and electrical engineering from 11 faculties/scholars and seven departments/units. The team expertise is of primary importance to complete the proposed research. The seed grant will allow for team building and networking, preliminary data acquisition, paying part-time student workers for labeling images/videos, and reimbursing travels of external collaborators visiting UGA. The funding will also support pilot studies conducted in the UGA’s Poultry Research Center. These preliminary works will further enhance the team’s ability to compete in federal grants such as USDA-NIFA, NSF, and NIH.