Two agricultural technology projects that stem from CITRIS at UC Santa Cruz Interdisciplinary Innovation Program (I2P) awards have received follow-on funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Colleen Josephson and Crystele Leauthaud will design and prototype a low-cost DIY irrigation system for specialty crops farmers to assist with crop watering, yield improvement and water waste reduction. This project expands on the researchers’ CITRIS-funded effort to build a low-cost, open-source environmental sensing platform co-designed with small growers to support equitable climate adaptation.
Darryl Wong and Dejan Milutinovic will expand on their 2022 CITRIS-supported project to develop autonomous tractors for farming. At the time, they focused on how the tractors visually perceive surroundings and navigate along rows of plants. The researchers will build on this work by collaborating with small, specialty crop producers to define the farmers’ needs and help deploy new fleets of electric tractors.