Environmental Resource Management

Consumers hold high standards for fresh food, which farmers aim to meet, but hot summer temperatures and long-haul deliveries can degrade quality even before produce makes it into stores. In a collaborative study, Angelos Deltsidis, assistant professor of horticulture in the University of Georgia’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, teamed up with UGA Cooperative Extension agents to improve upon a decades-old method of precooling to increase efficiency and reduce postharvest losses along the value chain.

An international team of researchers from the University of Georgia and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Germany have discovered a promising strategy to decode the metabolic pathways for plant compounds important in medical treatments, according to a new study published in Nature Chemical Biology.

Spray drones with pinpoint accuracy, produce-picking robots, autonomous systems to monitor broiler chicken health, and artificial intelligence to predict yield before the buds have faded from the trees — these are some of the solutions integrative precision agriculture promises an industry that is embracing the power of technology to address both age-old and emerging challenges.