Kristina Craft is a graduate student working toward a master’s degree in agricultural and biosystems engineering. The goal of her graduate work is to increase understanding in the science involved in mitigating adverse water quality and soil health impacts of row crop systems while maintaining or improving upon production. Kurt Rosentrater, associate professor of agricultural …Continue reading “Craft and Rosentrater named to CALS Sustainability Task Force”
Congratulations to the following ABE graduate students who were recently recognized by the Iowa State University Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering and the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE): Conrad Brendel – Iowa Section ASABE Outstanding M.S. student: Brendel grew up in Elizabethtown, PA and completed his B.S. at Iowa State in …Continue reading “ABE graduate students awarded scholarships”
Lie Tang, associate professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering, is working with scientists to improve crop resiliency using robots called PhenoBots. These robots collect data about plants as they grow in specific environments. With this data, the team can learn more about plant genes, environments for crops and ultimately a way to provide food to the world’s …Continue reading “Lie Tang utilizes plant-measuring robots to improve crop health”
As Iowa State University researchers Dr. Martin Gross (former graduate student in agricultural and biosystems engineering) and Dr. Zhiyou Wen worked in their lab to develop an algal growth technology to create algal biomass, they never imagined that what they developed would also solve a problem much bigger and way beyond the original scope of …Continue reading “ABE alum creates ISU startup factory company to take on the mitigation of N and P”
Matt Darr, an associate professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering at Iowa State University, called UAVs a “bleeding-edge technology” with great potential in agriculture. And faculty and students at Iowa State are playing a multifaceted role in advancing this emerging technology, he says. Iowa State engineers are developing software to make UAVs smarter and faster at …Continue reading “Birds-eye view of agriculture”
When Iowans talk about water quality, they sometimes think the major problem is manure. “I’m a big fan of the nutrient reduction strategy,” says Iowa State University Extension Agricultural Engineer Dan Andersen. “I’m not a big fan of when people call it the manure reduction strategy.” Andersen was one of the speakers at a manure management workshop …Continue reading “Andersen: Workshop offers insight on water quality issues”
Amy Kaleita, associate professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering, has many reasons for working with remote sensing. “I got into sensors because I think they’re cool and fun,” she says, “but also as a grad- uate student I did enough field work by hand that I thought, we’d never be able to answer these big questions …Continue reading “Soil to space”
Researchers are using remote sensing technologies to increase the health and efficiency of livestock production. One of the studies involved tracking chickens to get a sense of the basics for potential cage-free production. How many feeders to provide a cage- free flock is one of the many production questions that need answering, says Hongwei Xin, director of …Continue reading “Monitoring animal health”
David Grewell has his thumb on the pulse of industry. He also has a unique approach to problem solving, which he uses in his research and encourages among his students. A professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering, Grewell brings a wealth of real-world experience to the next generation of industry professionals. His goal is to see …Continue reading “Welding industry tech to student opportunities”
“You can observe and measure phenotype, but it has been mostly done manually,” Tang says. “We see more and more automated applications to help scientists collect data. With the Enviratron we can probe the plant with very high precision using the robotic arm’s advanced imaging and sensors.”
The U.S. News and World Report named Iowa State’s agricultural and biosystems undergraduate program number one among all national universities and first among public universities this September—a tie with Purdue University. Iowa State was ranked number two last year.
Going against almost all other industry currents, farming retirements exist only on paper, echoes Charles Schwab, a professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering at Iowa State University. “Farmers keep working at some level and you see these injuries mount. We’ve recorded so many farm injuries with 70- and 80-year-olds and that makes agriculture so different.”
From the air or highway, America’s fruited plains present a uniform vista of vast abundance. Not to Amy Kaleita. The associate professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering at Iowa State University sees a “nonlinear, somewhat chaotic” array of micro-plots, each with unique hydrology, root depths, soil characteristics – and ripe opportunities for smart technology to …Continue reading “Amy Kaleita: Soil Whisperer”
Daniel Andersen, Iowa State University assistant professor in Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering specializing in Manure Management, recently addressed questions of how manure moves through the soil profile in a recent edition of his blog “The Manure Scoop.” Andersen, aka Dr. Manure, explains that there are some factors at play that determine how manure filters down — …Continue reading “Andersen: Understanding manure flow is a piece of cake”
