The Iowa Soybean Research Center will be making its first ever appearance at the Farm Progress Show, September 1-3, 2026, near Boone, Iowa. Look for us inside the ISU exhibit space. ISRC Co-directors Mark Licht and Steve Whitham will be on hand to provide information about the ISRC’s research mission, while faculty research affiliates of the center will be demonstrating emerging technologies that have been funded by the center. The technologies include plant sensors that can detect changes in soybean plants and the two-armed “PhenoAgent” robot that can apply those plant sensors and other precision-related tasks.
Whitham, plant pathology, entomology and microbiology, has been working with Liang Dong, computer and electrical engineering, (formerly ISU, now University of Georgia) for several years to develop plant sensors that provide timely and precise diagnostic information from plant to smartphone. The sensors are a wearable patch of microscopic needles pressed into the leaf by hand. The needles are coated with a chemical-sensing material that reacts to specific molecules or pathogens in the plant’s tissue. The patch allows researchers to detect and monitor plants for a variety of biological and environmental stresses in “near real-time.”
As an example, Whitham explained the sensors have been developed to detect dicamba. “We can detect stress molecules that accumulate in the plant, like hydrogen peroxide, and we have developed sensors that can be used to specifically detect viruses as they're infecting plants.”
The sensors offer continuous monitoring by providing readings at specified time intervals and can be moved between plants in different areas of a field to determine problems at the field scale. The data is then displayed in an app that flags stress indicators so researchers can quickly assess whether a management response is needed. This project has gone on to receive additional funding from DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
Lie Tang, agricultural and biosystems engineering has designed a robot with a dual-arm system to mimic human arms and hands, dubbed the “PhenoAgent.” Its primary task is to place sensors on plant leaves in the greenhouse, a repetitive job usually performed by a lab technician. The “PhenoAgent” is designed to gently grab delicate plant leaves with surgical precision. Basically, one “hand” holds the leaf while the other “hand” places the sensor onto the leaf. Tang explained the PhenoAgent can also be used for tissue sampling and other tasks requiring surgical-type manipulations.
Remaining challenges, including sensor durability and scaling, still need to be addressed before large-scale field deployment is possible, which researchers estimate will take another five to 10 years.
Also in the ISU tent, will be ISRC faculty research affiliate, Arti Singh, agronomy, who has received prior ISRC funding. Singh will demonstrate the ISU Pest-ID, a smartphone app that helps identify crop disease, pest and other issues using the app’s artificial intelligence system, which has been trained on millions of images to provide identification and advice on how to manage the detected issue.
“Our goal is to promote Iowa State as a leader in agricultural technology and provide research-based innovations to assist Iowa’s agricultural workforce,” said Licht, who is also an ISU Extension cropping systems specialist. “It may not have a direct, ‘next year’ application, but we must keep advancing the science to get to that point.”
“The research being funded by the ISRC is important in that it provides many Iowa State researchers with much needed seed funding to get a project off the ground while allowing for the investigation of cutting-edge ideas that help keep ISU a leader in ag research and innovation,” added Whitham.
