The Soynomics team at ISU has produced their own line of Soynomics videos hosted on the Integrated Pest Management and Soynomics YouTube Channels. Each video covers research that members of the group are working on and includes a variety of topics such as use of drones, robots, satellites and varying types of sensors that is advancing sciences and research on heat and water stress, yield prediction, pod counting and yield estimation, disease and insect pest scouting, crop maturity, artificial intelligence and more. They also highlight a ‘Women in Ag and AI’ initiative that highlights women working to solve complex agricultural problems using an inter-disciplinary approach.

The Soynomics team is made of scientists and engineers interested in solving complex problems using modern tools with a focus on soybeans. Team members include Danny Singh and Arti Singh, agronomy; Baskar Ganapathysubramanian and Soumik Sarkar, mechanical engineering; Daren Mueller, Matt O’Neal and Greg Tylka, plant pathology, entomology and microbiology and a talented pool of staff scientists and agronomists, post-doctoral fellows, graduate and undergraduate students working with the above-mentioned scientists – many of the students are featured in the videos.

The team has received research funding from federal agencies and farmer-led organizations to work on digital phenotyping through the use of sensors, aerial systems, ground robots and smartphones complemented with advanced data analytics. Their approaches involve a transdisciplinary focus, with the participation of farmers in helping shape the research directions, and have led to milestone outputs. Brandon Kleinke, Integrated Pest Management, ISU, was instrumental in creating the videos.