Accelerating Discovery for Ag and Food Systems
DRAFT CASE FOR SUPPORT
AT A GLANCE
Led by the nation’s #1 college of agriculture, this high-tech initiative to improve sustainable production of plants, animals and food unites a broad coalition of UC Davis faculty experts in the agricultural and environmental sciences with experts in complementary disciplines such as engineering, computer science, veterinary medicine and human health. Together, we will use AI and other advanced technologies to speed the science that makes agricultural systems more efficient, abundant and resilient.
KEY ACTIVITIES
- Drive exponential growth in data that enables rapid, continual improvements in breeding, crop management and other practices that yield better products and more resilient plants, animals and habitats
- Support public, private and community partners in leveraging science to sustain healthy production environments and ecosystems
- Ensure a growing population’s stable access to nutritious food as well as cleaner, more sustainable sources of fuels, textiles and animal feeds
INITIATIVE LEADERSHIP
- Jason Bond, Professor of Entomology and Executive Associate Dean, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
- Christine Diepenbrock, Associate Professor of Plant Sciences
ADMINISTRATIVE LEAD
- Ashley Stokes, Dean, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
TODAY
Around the world, the systems that sustain thriving communities and a healthy planet are under increasing strain. Resource competition and unpredictable climate patterns already challenge our ability to support a global population of 8.3 billion people, which the United Nations projects will near 10 billion by 2050.
Yet, many solutions may be within our grasp if we can combine artificial intelligence, advanced sensor measurements and data analytics to harness the remarkable potential of plants, animals and other living organisms. At UC Davis, our world-renowned experts are modeling how these tools can improve the resilience of crops, animals, lands and waters that will sustain agricultural productivity and ecosystem health through times of change.
Our vision is to accelerate breakthroughs across the agricultural industry by using AI and other powerful technologies to supercharge a key scientific process known as phenotyping.
This crucial but labor-intensive research enables experts to observe how plants, animals and other organisms behave under real-world conditions. From an ounce of yeast to a field of wheat, or from the moisture content of a single leaf to the total water needs of a complex farming operation, phenotyping is how we routinely measure the traits, performance and environmental responses of the living things upon which agriculture depends.
New capabilities in machine learning, remote sensing, and AI-powered data processing have fundamentally changed what phenotyping can measure. Cutting-edge hardware and evolving large language models are making it possible to record and evaluate the physical traits of living things and ideal growing environments at speeds and scales we have never seen before. These technologies can be transformational tools for the agricultural and environmental sciences, allowing us to collectively develop crops, products and growing methods that adapt as quickly as the world changes.
KITCHEN-TABLE INNOVATION, DEFINED BY UC DAVIS
Phenotyping discoveries and technological innovation are behind many of UC Davis’ best-known contributions to agricultural production and consumer trends. For example:
- Dairy, tree nuts and grapes are the most valuable agricultural commodities in California. UC Davis has been a vital partner in developing abundant markets for these goods — from discovering the secret to almond pollination in the 1920s and cultivating the flavorful, disease-free Chardonnay grapes widely grown today, to devising innovative, natural ways to reduce livestock emissions for more sustainable dairy and meat production.
- About 60% of strawberries consumed worldwide are varieties developed at UC Davis. Our Strawberry Breeding Program has developed more than 70 varieties over the last century, continually improving flavor, yield, disease resistance, climate tolerance and shelf stability. Thanks to this work, strawberries became a year-round crop in California, where in-state growers have early access to new UC Davis varieties and pay less for licensed cultivars.
- UC Davis faculty are leading experts in the biological conversion of food waste and other routes toward regenerative farming and innovation in byproduct reuse. They frequently collaborate across colleges and schools to join expertise in complementary specialties, like food science and bioenvironmental engineering. For example, engineering Professor Ruihong Zhang’s lab is currently researching how alternatives to plastic packaging made from cheese byproducts can be produced at competitive cost and commercial scale.
As the top agricultural university in the United States, UC Davis has a storied legacy of leading the world toward solutions that ensure food security as well as stable agricultural economies — a legacy we build upon every day. By integrating AI and other advanced technologies into ongoing data collection and interpretation, we can quickly synthesize detailed, accurate information about every animal in a flock of thousands, every plant in a multi-acre field, and every cell culture used to make novel food products, lab-grown fabric or biomanufactured construction materials.
TOMORROW
Phenotyping is how experts turn fields, barns, greenhouses and other environments into high-resolution observatories where we can see, measure and improve agricultural systems.
Just as we gather data on individuals and populations to make predictions and solve problems in human society, scientists collect data on plants, animals, microbes and environments to understand their relationships and make agricultural production more efficient, sustainable and safe.
By understanding unique behaviors as well as biological, chemical and physical traits, we can continually fine-tune how an organism responds to its context — leading to improvements that benefit everyone from farmers and food scientists to consumers. Measuring how living things relate with their surroundings and other organisms, such as pollinators and pests, is also key to understanding and sustainably managing forests, rangelands, and other natural and urban habitats.
Historically, phenotyping has taken up the bulk of many scientists’ research hours as they observe and manually measure characteristics of individual organisms, interpret behaviors in specific contexts, cross-reference existing data, and map connections between genetics, traits and environments. While advances in gene sequencing and genotyping have revealed DNA blueprints that help us identify the markers or genes behind particular traits, understanding these blueprints still requires intensive observation of thousands to millions of small changes over time.
Now, rapid phenotyping can use sensors, imaging systems, automation and data analytics to observe entire populations of organisms quickly, accurately and objectively. Not only do these capabilities expedite the trait-mapping we already do, they also give us new powers to understand characteristics that have not been measurable in the past — for example, the stride of every animal in a herd moving across pastures.
With additional philanthropic support and even more of the right tools in place, UC Davis can accomplish the intensive, specialized labor of agricultural phenotyping in a fraction of the time it currently takes. Using technologies and systems that can perform precise real-time measurements and process bulk data with breathtaking speed, rapid phenotyping will be a potent driver of innovation that makes sustainable agriculture more productive and ecosystems more resilient.
DEFINING THE PATH FORWARD
UC Davis is ideally positioned to lead AI-powered transformation in how agricultural and food systems continually improve. We are ranked the #1 U.S. university for sustainability, with top programs in plant and animal sciences, food science, biological and agricultural engineering, veterinary medicine and public health — just some of the areas of strength we bring to comprehensive work in the agricultural and environmental sciences. As a land-grant university, we have developed unmatched multidisciplinary expertise in service to the public good.
KEY FUNDING PRIORITIES
This initiative will amplify UC Davis’ agricultural leadership and industry impacts through game-changing investments in technological infrastructure, resources for faculty scientists and research teams, and investments in the next generation of industry leaders.
PROGRAMMING | GOAL: $40,000,000
- Endow innovative research programs for biomanufacturing, analyses of human and animal digestion, and the phenotyping of plants, animals and food
- Support the development, fabrication and deployment of new phenotyping instruments to measure specific traits
- Sustain robust high-tech training programs that equip the next generation of scientists, technicians and experts
PEOPLE | GOAL: $22,000,000
- Establish new positions for specialized personnel, including technologists, an agricultural biostatistician, a coordinator for programs in agronomy and plant breeding, and a community education specialist
- Create undergraduate research fellowships in the phenotyping of plants, animals and food
FACILITIES, EQUIPMENT AND TECHNOLOGY | GOAL: $18,000,000
- Add hardware and infrastructure for high-volume data collection, including drones, rovers, soil sensors and weather stations
- Make technological upgrades to existing facilities to enhance phenotyping capacity, including retrofitting the Davis barn’s metabolic unit to accommodate thousands of animals
- Add a campus server room to increase data storage and computing capacity across collaborating disciplines
In the years ahead, UC Davis will build on its foundation of global leadership and distinctive agricultural assets, including land, cutting-edge technology and supporting infrastructure. Indeed, state-of-the-art facilities such as the UC Davis Resnick Center for Agricultural Innovation provide the specialized tools and physical spaces to ensure our university remains at the forefront of crop, product and food-system innovation. We can leverage these distinctions to the fullest with private support to grow our technological infrastructure, capitalize on multidisciplinary connections and catalyze research of broad, bold scope.
We are inspired by this timely opportunity to take a core area of UC Davis strength and move it farther and faster than ever before. Led by the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, this initiative to accelerate discovery and innovation in food and agriculture will leverage expertise across multiple UC Davis disciplines, colleges and centers, including the College of Biological Sciences (CBS), College of Engineering (COE), the Weill School of Veterinary Medicine (WSVM), and the UC Davis Genome Center. By building technological capacity in robotics, high-performance computing and applied breeding programs, our university can accelerate 21st-century agricultural science on a global scale.
DEFINING DISTINCTIONS
- UC Davis helped make California a world agricultural powerhouse. We have generations of experience developing high-value, sustainably grown commodities and crops and inspiring industry innovations.
- A mission of public service and unmatched multidisciplinary expertise position UC Davis to strengthen agricultural systems sustainably and equitably.
- We have a tradition of deep partnership and collaboration with growers, ranchers, producers, communities, and industry and government partners.
- UC Davis plays a major role in agricultural workforce development, including through partnerships with Cooperative Extension networks and the USDA Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS).
THE IDEAL PLACE TO ADVANCE AGRICULTURAL IMPACT
From the beginning, UC Davis has pushed the boundaries of agricultural and environmental discovery to provide solutions in the public interest.
CA&ES has more than a century of experience improving industry practices in the highest-revenue U.S. farming state, and the remarkable variety of growing regions in California allows our advances to be translated to farming environments worldwide. Nearly half the vegetables and three-quarters of the fruits and nuts consumed in the United States, plus a large share of U.S. agricultural exports, come from California.
Growers, ranchers, producers, communities and public partners have turned to our university as a trusted source of agricultural leadership for generations. Today, at a time of dynamic environmental, climate and market changes, our ability to accelerate agricultural discovery and innovation will benefit stakeholders around the planet. By advancing phenotyping for agricultural resilience, UC Davis will bolster food and nutritional security, farm and industry economics, and environmental sustainability throughout California and the world.
In partnership with philanthropists and industry leaders, CA&ES has already made essential investments in physical infrastructure and land that will support comprehensive integration of rapid phenotyping and high-performance computing resources into our research. With additional private investment in technology, personnel and programs, we can accelerate phenotyping progress and launch the next era in UC Davis agricultural and environmental leadership.
DEFINING ASSETS
- CA&ES recently opened a high-throughput plant phenotyping facility — one of only a handful in the U.S.—that powers discovery in plant breeding, agronomy and stress resilience.
- UC Davis is one of the first campuses in the country to install Benchbot technology, a robotic imaging platform being deployed across USDA-ARS research stations to build open-source databases used to train agricultural AI.
- The UC Davis Resnick Center for Agricultural Innovation has added state-of-the-art laboratories for plant, byproduct and food science, biomanufacturing, and the design of new crop technologies in the heart of the Davis campus.
- CA&ES now owns one of the largest nursery complexes in the world, located in the highest-producing U.S. agricultural county (Kern County). Gifted to UC Davis by a visionary industry partner, the property includes substantial field acreage and 420,000 square feet of greenhouses — a vast expanse of controlled-environment infrastructure with nearly limitless potential to accelerate research.
- UC Davis has rare expertise in metabolic research across animals and people, supported by the “robotic stomach” technology we developed to mimic human digestion as well as desktop ruminant gastric simulators that allow for non-invasive observation of feed digestion, chemistry sampling and more.
DEFINED BY UC DAVIS, REFINED WITH YOU
Our university already possesses key ingredients for transforming agricultural systems: the world’s leading scientists, partnerships with colleagues across key disciplines like engineering, health and computer science, and substantial research infrastructure and land. With private support to add significant programmatic investment, dedicated specialists, computing power, and next-level connectivity across our field, barn and other research environments, UC Davis will model for the world how humankind and a changing planet can thrive together.
The agricultural and life sciences can harvest unparalleled benefits from today’s quantum leaps in data collection and processing. Philanthropic investment will be a critical driver of our capacity to use machine learning and artificial intelligence to evaluate key traits in plants, animals and a variety of agricultural and food products to create a more sustainable future. As a trusted advocate for UC Davis who can speak from a valuable vantage point beyond the university, you can help us refine our ideas for this initiative in ways that will resonate with individual donor prospects, industry stakeholders, foundations and corporate partners. We are grateful for the time and expertise you have committed to sharing in response to this vision, and we welcome your comments, questions and ideas.