In a world marked by anomalous weather, population growth, and shrinking arable land, the demand for reliable food production has never been more urgent. At the University of Florida’s Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, a new generation of scientists is answering that call with technology that transcends borders and disciplines. Among them is doctoral candidate Boaz Berhanu Tulu, whose research harnesses AI to turn raw data into actionable insights. Tulu’s story spans the gap between continents, between laboratories and fields, and between problems and solutions.
Boaz Berhanu Tulu came to University of Florida with an impressive resume. His story begins in the rolling farmlands of rural Ethiopia. Born and raised in a small farming village, he grew up watching his family and neighbors toil in fields, at the mercy of unpredictable rains and crop diseases. The challenges he witnessed firsthand – from pests devouring harvests to soils yielding less each year – planted a seed in his mind, “I saw my parents and neighbors fight so hard to grow their crops, only to lose them to pests or drought,” Tulu recalls, “Those early experiences lit a fire in me to harness science and engineering to help farmers like them.”
Determined to make a difference, Tulu pursued a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering, with a bold idea: apply the power of artificial intelligence to agriculture. In Ethiopia’s traditional farming communities, this was an unconventional path, but Tulu knew that technology could hold the key to transforming rural livelihoods.
As an undergraduate at Jimma University in 2017, he collaborated with a small team of friends on a senior project: a drone for agricultural disease surveillance. The homemade drone was designed to fly over local crop fields and detect early signs of plant disease or stress from the air, giving farmers valuable time to respond. The innovative project earned him a scholarship for graduate studies in AI. Bolstered by that new support to continue his studies and research, he and his colleagues set out to transform technical expertise into practical, tangible tools.
Not long after Tulu completed his undergraduate studies, a crisis hit Ethiopia’s coffee sector. Coffee is the lifeblood of Ethiopia’s economy and culture, but the country was facing devastating outbreaks of coffee plant diseases, threatening entire harvests. (In fact, research in Ethiopia and neighboring Kenya showed that up to 57% of coffee production can be lost to plant diseases). Tulu saw the farmers in his community struggling to identify and control diseases like coffee leaf rust before it was too late. With his background in AI and engineering, he knew this was a problem he could help solve.
In 2019, Tulu led the development of an AI-powered mobile application for the early detection and prevention of coffee diseases. Called the “Debo Buna” app (“Buna” meaning coffee in Amharic), it was essentially a pocket plant doctor for coffee farmers. The app allowed farmers or extension workers to snap a photo of a coffee leaf using a smartphone; behind the scenes, AI algorithms would analyze the image for telltale signs of disease, pests, or nutrient deficiencies. If a disease was detected, the app would immediately alert the user and provide guidance on how to manage it, such as applying a specific organic fungicide, pruning infected branches, or taking other remedial actions.
By training AI to detect patterns in thousands of coffee plant images, Tulu’s tool dramatically improved the accuracy and speed of diagnosis, helping prevent misdiagnosis and excessive chemical use. Farmers reported that they were able to limit damage to their coffee trees from the first use of the app, a testament to how timely information could save livelihoods. The app was designed to support multiple local languages and provide voice guidance. From Amharic to Afaan Oromo and Tigrinya, farmers could use the interface in their mother tongue, so that the technology reached the broadest possible audience on the ground.
The impact of the coffee app did not go unnoticed and earned Tulu national and international recognition. Ethiopian media outlets covered the young engineer bringing high-tech solutions to coffee farmers, and agricultural extension agents across the country started adopting the app as part of their toolkit. “Coffee is more than a crop in Ethiopia – it’s our heritage,” Tulu says, “When I saw farmers losing half their yield to diseases we could identify with a simple photo, I knew we had to act. We didn’t just build an app; we empowered farmers with knowledge.” The success of this innovation put Tulu and his collaborators on the map as emerging leaders in the agricultural technology (agritech) space. It also opened doors for funding and partnerships.
Buoyed by the progress with the coffee disease app, Tulu turned his attention to another challenge facing smallholder farmers: soil health. He realized that many farmers across Africa were essentially farming in the dark when it came to their soil’s condition. Getting a soil test to find out if the soil had enough nitrogen or the correct pH for a particular crop typically meant sending samples to a distant laboratory, waiting weeks for results, and often paying a fee beyond the reach of a small farmer. As a result, crucial decisions like which crop to plant or how much fertilizer to use were too often guesswork. Poor soil fertility was one of the silent factors keeping yields low year after year.
In 2021, Tulu co-founded an agritech startup dedicated to solving this problem. Together with his team, he developed “Omishtu-Joy,” a portable, solar-powered soil testing device built for smallholder farmers in rural areas. (The name Omishtu-Joy means “Joy of the Farmer” in Afaan Oromo, a local Ethiopian language, reflecting the team’s mission to bring happiness and confidence to farmers through technology). This innovation packed what would normally be an entire soil laboratory into a unit small enough to carry to the field.
The Omishtu-Joy device uses AI-powered sensors to measure key soil parameters, pH, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium levels, temperature, and moisture – all within minutes. A farmer can insert the device’s probe into a soil sample (or directly into the ground) and let the device do the work. The unit is solar-powered, which means it can operate in remote villages far from any electrical grid, charging up during the day under the sun. Once the device collects the soil data, it transmits the information wirelessly to a companion app on the farmer’s phone. On the app, the numbers and readings are translated into plain-language insights. The farmer sees an analysis of their soil’s fertility and an identification of the soil type, and the app advises on the best crops to cultivate for that specific soil profile or what nutrients are needed to improve it, taking the guesswork out of farming decisions.
For Tulu, Omishtu-Joy represents precisely the kind of impact he set out to achieve. It’s a high-tech invention designed for real-world farmers. “We didn’t want just to build prototypes, we wanted to deliver working solutions that farmers could use in the field,” Tulu explains, echoing a mantra that guided the project from day one.“If a tool isn’t user-friendly, it won’t get adopted,” he says, “So we kept the farmer at the center of our design process.”
Tulu’s work earned him the Mandela Washington Fellowship in 2022, the U.S.Department of State’s flagship program for young African leaders. The fellowship brought Tulu to the United States, where he spent several months at Purdue University in Indiana, studying technology, business, and entrepreneurship in the agricultural sector. “The fellowship was a turning point,” Tulu notes,“It opened my eyes to agricultural innovations outside of Ethiopia and showed me that many of our challenges are shared across the continent. I came back with a wider vision and a network of collaborators from around the world.”
After completing the fellowship, he arrived in Gainesville as a Ph.D. student in the University of Florida’s Agricultural and Biological Engineering (ABE) department, eager to delve into new research frontiers. At UF, Tulu joined a research group focused on AI-driven water management and remote sensing. Under the guidance of Dr. Haimanote Bayabil – a leading expert in water resources – Tulu began working on projects that apply AI to optimize how water is used in agriculture, utilizing remote sensing data (collected from drones and satellites) to monitor crop health and soil moisture, and then applying AI models to determine when and how much to irrigate specific crops.
Tulu envisions a future where AI and emerging technologies become everyday tools for farmers across Africa. His long-term mission is to develop scalable, farmer-friendly solutions to the most critical agricultural challenges facing his home continent, from soil degradation to climate- induced stresses. In the UF ABE department – thousands of miles from where his journey began – Tulu has found a community that shares his passion. “It’s a long way from my village to Gainesville,” he reflects, “but the dream remains the same: use science and technology to help farmers like those I grew up with. My dream is to see technologies like these in the hands of every farmer who needs them,” Tulu says.
1
