AgTech Innovation Hub accelerates climate-risk research

As flooding and drought get more intense due to climate change, producers will need better ways to manage the water that flows through their farmland. 

Many farmers currently rely on tile drainage, a system of zigzagging pipes beneath their fields. Each pipe has tiny holes in it that help pull water levels down. By manually opening underground outlet gates at the ends of these pipes, farmers can let water drain out from the edges of their fields. 

“It's literally like pulling a plug in your sink,” said Dr. Steve Lyon, an AgTech Innovation Hub principal investigator and a professor of hydrology in the School of Environment and Natural Resources. 

To make it easier for farmers to retain or release water, this AgTech Innovation Hub-funded project will study the effects of automating the drainage water management process using sensor technology that monitors real-time water levels in farmers’ fields. Using an app on their phone or computer, a farmer could program their outlet gates to open, close, and respond automatically to these levels. Data gathered from the sensors could also improve decision-making. 

“Having access to real-time data about water movements or water levels in your field can help you actually manage systems very efficiently and effectively from a precision perspective, like when to schedule different pesticide or nutrient management options,” Lyon said. “From the farmer side, it’s great to have access to that data.” 

The project hopes to evaluate the impact of this technology by looking at the content, quality, and volume of water in experimental fields equipped with the automated drainage system. Researchers also plan to use sensors to consider how crops respond by measuring stress, yield, and photosynthetic activity. 

Besides reducing the time farmers take to manage drainage, this technology could help mitigate drought by helping producers conserve water when rainfall is scarce. And by releasing water at a slower trickle when needed, it could offset downstream flooding impacts or even help plants uptake more nutrients from water over time, reducing nutrient runoff and improving crop health. 

“I think this idea that the technology farmers already have and the things already on their land can be leveraged into these types of climate solutions is amazing,” Lyon said. “They can be part of the solution.” 

Principal Investigators: Dr. Steve Lyon (School of Environment and Natural Resources, SENR), Dr. Yanlan Liu (SENR), Dr. Vinayak Shedekar (Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering, FABE), Dr. Hemendra Kumar (SENR) 

The climate risks facing Ohio aren’t just coming soon—they’re already here. Data shows that summers and winters in the state are getting warmer, and the state’s planting season has even gained another month. These changes could cause major complications for soybeans, one of Ohio’s top crops. 

“We are in the trend of having summers that feel more like Arkansas than Ohio,” said Dr. Horacio Lopez-Nicora, an AgTech Innovation Hub principal investigator and an assistant professor in the Department of Plant Pathology. “Soybean pathogens can overwinter when we have very mild and warm winters. It allows pathogens to survive in the field and inoculum to build up.” 

With funding from the AgTech Innovation Hub, CFAES researchers are pursuing a multi-part project focused on protecting soybean seed health, improving seed quality, and ensuring crop establishment. 

First, the scientists plan to use controlled environment growth chambers to mimic extreme temperatures and rainfall and study how these factors affect seed health. They will also expose seeds to soilborne pathogens and see how the pathogens themselves adapt to these conditions. 

"In other words, we want to recreate these extreme weather events and evaluate what’s going on,” Lopez-Nicora said. 

The second aspect of the project will consider how planting soybeans at different times of the season affects seed health. After harvest, researchers will analyze seeds collected from the CFAES “Battle of the Belt” planting date experiment. Using a technique called metagenomics, they will scrutinize the seeds’ microbiomes (all the tiny beneficial or harmful organisms in and on seeds that contribute to their health). 

The researchers hope their results will help them design more accurate predictive models that will guide best management practice recommendations for producers. 

The team is grateful for the support from Nationwide, and they emphasize that the funding has allowed them to pull together a well-equipped interdisciplinary team. 

“With the AgTech Hub, we’ve found that first push or—no pun intended—that seed to develop and grow,” Lopez-Nicora said. “We’re full of ideas, and with this funding opportunity, we know they are going to turn into reality.” 

Principal Investigators: Dr. Horacio Lopez-Nicora (Department of Plant Pathology), Dr. Alex Lindsey (Department of Horticulture and Crop Science, HCS), Dr. Laura Lindsey (HCS), Dr. Jonathan Jacobs (Plant Pathology) 

Biopesticides and biostimulants are natural substances or organisms that enhance plants’ natural defenses and growth mechanisms. These products can be especially helpful for organic producers, who focus on protecting their plants’ health with few chemical inputs.  

Unfortunately, for current commercial biopesticides and biostimulants to work effectively, high concentrations must be applied to plants, resulting in high costs for farmers. 

As increasing temperatures from climate change cause pest populations to swell, and as pathogens develop resistance to current remedies, researchers are focusing their attention on boosting the impact of these products. 

CFAES researchers have developed an innovative cell-penetrating protein that can be fused with these products, helping them work better. The protein-fused remedies have already been tested on tomatoes in growth chambers, but in this AgTech Innovation Hub-funded project, researchers will test them on a much larger scale, in fields and in controlled environment hydroponics production. 

In the growth chambers, scientists only sprayed a single pathogen strain onto the experimental tomatoes to test how well the boosted biostimulants and biopesticides protected the plants. But in a real field, crops can be impacted by numerous other factors, including pests, viruses, fungi, drought, heat, or extreme temperatures. 

“That’s why we need the funding, to test the products’ efficacy in the real world—because even though you’re showing good results in the growth chambers and in the laboratory, that’s only good for publication,” said Dr. Guo-Liang Wang, an AgTech Innovation Hub principal investigator and a professor in the Department of Plant Pathology. “If you want to develop products and get farmers to use them, they want to really see what they will gain.” 

Biostimulants and biopesticides fused with this new protein only need to be applied once or twice to plants, which could save farmers money and make the products more environmentally friendly. And researchers think the protein-fused products could even be used on crops after they’re harvested, not just before planting or while they are growing.  

“This funding is critical for our project; it really came at a perfect time,” Guo-Liang Wang said. “This is a great opportunity for us to move from laboratory research to a field application, creating impacts in crop production in Ohio and potentially the whole country.” 

Principal Investigators: Dr. Guo-Liang Wang (Plant Pathology), Dr. Dehua Pei (Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry), Dr. David Francis (HCS), Dr. Christopher Taylor (Plant Pathology) 

Dr. Cara Lawson had just moved to Oregon in the fall of 2020 when intense wildfires spread across the Western United States.  

“Coming from the Midwest and living in Texas before that, it was nothing like I had ever seen before,” said the AgTech Innovation Hub principal investigator and assistant professor in agricultural communication. “It was really scary; I didn’t know where to go to get information.” 

Living through this extreme experience inspired her interest in understanding how climate change and communication are connected, and how audiences across the nation perceive climate change messaging. 

“There is currently no data out there for what a national audience perceives in terms of climate risk and climate behavior,” Lawson said. “I thought it was really interesting to think about how social science could play a part in addressing these overall effects of climate change and mitigating risk.” 

For this AgTech Innovation Hub-funded research project, Lawson and her team will create an online survey to collect data across four U.S. regions, hoping to understand how audiences throughout the United States are segmented and clustered around climate change attitudes and beliefs. 

“Values really allow for a conversation, and those can be a great foundation for creating a message that’s going to make a difference,” she said. “That’s a place where you can find common ground.” 

After collecting data, the researchers will create a map of these attitudes and values that will allow them to compare perceptions based on geographic location, demographics, and other factors. 

Lawson hopes this project sets the stage for future climate risk perception and messaging research. 

“I really love this project because it’s going to give us the opportunity to zoom in and out on how the nation views climate risk,” Lawson said. “The opportunity to compare on this large of a scale is really exciting.” 

Principal Investigators: Dr. Cara Lawson (Department of Agricultural Communication, Education, and Leadership, ACEL) and Dr. Scott Scheer (ACEL) 

Understanding agricultural risks and predicting crop yields are essential tasks for farmers, whose economic stability relies on producing quality products and locking in prices. Working through these aspects will become even more essential as climate change threatens to transform the agricultural landscape. 

In this AgTech Innovation Hub-funded project, CFAES scientists hope to use artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and drones to simplify the process of identifying crop risks for producers. Instead of using just one type of data to train machine learning models, researchers plan to combine weather and soil data with plant tissue information and satellite, smartphone, and aerial drone images. 

“As humans, if we use all our five senses, we get a richer view of what we’re perceiving,” said Luke Waltz, a PhD student in the Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering who will assist with this research. “That’s the analogy we use here. We felt like there was an opportunity to help put AI models together that combined the data from these multiple modalities.” 

To train their AI models, researchers plan to collect data from three fields that are a part of the CFAES “Battle of the Belt” planting date experiment. They will also gather other observational data, such as manually classifying corn and soybean characteristics. 

Researchers hope that platforms and tools developed from this initiative will help provide insights that can inform farmers’ decision-making when managing their crops. 

“It’s not about telling the farmer what to do, it’s about giving them quality information that each one can use in their unique farming situation,” Waltz said. 

Significant research focused on the applications of AI in agriculture is happening at many organizations and universities across the nation and world. The researchers hope that this project will help Ohio State become an important part of this worldwide community. 

“We are excited to be a part of the AgTech Hub because it’s providing the platform for us to make an important contribution to agriculture,” said Sami Khanal, a principal investigator and assistant professor in the Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering.  

Principal Investigators: Dr. Sami Khanal (FABE), Dr. Arnab Nandi (Department of Computer Science and Engineering), Dr. Laura Lindsey (HCS)