Location: Crop Production and Protection
Project Number: 0500-00053-005-218-G
Project Type: Grant
Start Date: May 1, 2026
End Date: Apr 30, 2030
Objective:
Develop and deploy a low-cost, AI-powered, smartphone image-based digital tool for rapid assessment of: (1) FHB incidence, severity, and disease index from field canopy images and (2) FDK proportion from kernel images, providing practical decision support for breeders, pathologists, producers, and other stakeholders.
Approach:
This project will build annotated smartphone image datasets for FHB and FDK across major U.S. winter wheat regions, develop and validate advanced AI models for robust FHB and FDK assessment, and deploy them through a secure, cloud-hosted mobile and web application for end-user access and practical application.