Counting Down N.C. PSI’s Top Five Hits of 2024

2024 marked Adrian Percy’s third full year as executive director of the North Carolina Plant Sciences Initiative, and with the new year approaching, he shared a list of what he sees as the initiative’s Top 5 accomplishments for the year. Let’s count them down:

5. Growing the Extension Agent Network

Extension agents are NC State University’s frontline in interacting with growers, helping them understand and use research-based knowledge and technology on their farms and conveying their needs to university researchers and Extension specialists who provide solutions. Twenty-six agents representing 37 counties across the state form a network that works closely with the N.C. PSI. 

Formed in 2023 and expanded in 2024, the network helped refine a cover crops tool that growers are now using, and the agents are taking part in other projects related to precision pest ecology, advanced disease diagnostics, sensor development for stress, digital agriculture and more. The North Carolina Tobacco Trust Fund Commission, N.C. Soybean Producers Association, Corn Growers Association of North Carolina, and N.C. Small Grain Growers Association and David Peele have supported the Extension Agent Network.

4. Launching the Seed2Grow entrepreneurship program

The N.C. PSI has built a strong foundation for supporting entrepreneurial activities to benefit the agricultural sector. In April, we celebrated the opening of a startup company incubator and the launch of its Seed2Grow entrepreneurship program. The incubator opening completed the Plant Sciences Building’s construction, and the Seed2Grow program is serving seven startup companies, with two occupying the incubator. Seed2Grow is led by an 11-member Commercialization Advisory Council of university and faculty administrators along with ag tech industry leaders. To goal is to help entrepreneurs bring NC State plant sciences discoveries into the marketplace so they benefit both farmers and consumers.

3. Hosting 1,000 K-12 visitors

The N.C. PSI offers an array of opportunities to engage and excite K-12 students about the field of plant sciences and the breadth and importance of related careers. In 2024, our Demo Lab hummed with activity. NC State-based summer camps brought hundreds of students to the Plant Science Building. And the educators we trained amplified our workforce development efforts by bringing new knowledge and lessons to their classrooms. In all, 1,000 K-12 visitors came to the Plant Sciences Building in 2024 to learn more about plants and agriculture.

2. Training students to put AI to work for agriculture

Artificial intelligence and data analytics promise to open new opportunities for agriculture. Here’s a sampling of ways the N.C. PSI helped prepare undergraduate and graduate students in 2024 to lead the AI revolution in agriculture:

• Through the multi-institutional SAPLINGS program, aimed at increasing the number of under-represented students in agriculture, the N.C. PSI is supporting undergraduate and graduate students with AI-in-ag internships and fellowships with affiliated faculty members.

• Through our fast-paced 2024 Hackathon competition, NC State students and postdoctoral scholars tackled AI-in-ag challenges with real-world implications.
  
• In partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s SciNet program, the N.C. PSI awarded five internships to graduate students with strong skills in data science, computer science, and related fields to help USDA Agricultural Research Service teams work on data-intensive agricultural research problems. 

Additionally, to continue efforts to train graduate students in AI for sustainable agriculture, Terri Long, the N.C. PSI’s platform director for education and workforce development, landed a $3 million grant to carry out a national graduate student research traineeship in artificial intelligence for sustainable agriculture. Called GRAD-AID for Ag, the program kicks off in 2025 and will continue for five years.

1. Responding to stakeholder needs

Stakeholders are central to the N.C. PSI’s research process and the reason the initiative exists. They fund our work, direct our work, partner with us and rely on us to help them sustain a healthy food supply for a growing world population. Formally, the Extension Agent Network and Growers Advisory Council play a big role in ensuring we keep them in mind in all that we do.

In 2024, N.C. PSI took steps to ensure that even more North Carolina agricultural leaders were involved. In a workshop called Charting a Future, participants developed and voted on ideas for future research that cut across multiple commodities to meet growers’ highest-priority needs. Automation for labor efficiency, early detection of pests and pathogens and production for human and animal health/differentiated value emerging as top vote-getters.

To kickstart research to automate more farm tasks, 48 university faculty members from six colleges joined agricultural industry leaders and others in the Connecting2Grow: Automation in Ag workshop. Already, N.C. PSI scientists and engineers have several ongoing projects that address automation and other high-priority needs, and Connecting2Grow participants worked in interdisciplinary teams to develop proposals for future research and technology development projects.