Highlights
- UF/IFAS awarded $321,811 to five research teams leveraging artificial intelligence for agriculture through the 2026 LIFT AI program.
- Projects include AI-driven blueberry pollination tracking and machine-harvestable peppers, Everglades crop disease detection via drones and generative AI to automate and improve biodiversity detection.
- Researchers will use UF’s HiPerGator supercomputer, the fastest among US universities, and will share results through UF/IFAS Extension and open-source software tools, among other methods.
University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2026 Launching Innovative Faculty Teams in AI funding program (LIFT AI), which provides UF/IFAS researchers with funding to pursue artificial intelligence research within agriculture.
Five UF/IFAS teams were chosen this year, with a total of $321,811 funded. The teams will use UF’s supercomputer, HiPerGator, to reach their research goals that strive to solve problems of food system security, disease prevention and environmental protection.
“Testing new possibilities on behalf of farmers and producers is what we do best, and leveraging AI in our research is one of the ways UF/IFAS hopes to help solve these agricultural problems faster and more efficiently,” said Damian Adams, UF/IFAS associate dean for research.
Funded projects will address challenges with effective pollination of blueberry crops in light of challenges such as varying bloom times across cultivars and a lack of bee-tracking software in the current technological landscape. That research project, led by UF/IFAS professor Changying “Charlie” Li, will use Internet-of-Things (IoT) cameras and AI tracking algorithms to monitor bees as they collect and disperse pollen, which will help beekeepers and farmers improve management strategies around pollination.
Another project will focus on using AI to protect agriculture in the Everglades area. Current methods of finding and managing crop diseases in the Everglades Agricultural Area, a region of about 700,000 acres south of Lake Okeechobee where sugar, rice and other crops are grown, involve spotting them by eye and confirming with a laboratory test, a process that can be labor-intensive, costly and slow to identify infections before they spread. Led by Katia Viana Xavier, assistant professor at the UF/IFAS Everglades Research and Education Center in the Department of Plant Pathology, the project will use AI-equipped drones to fly over crops and spot crop diseases early, minimizing the need for fungicide use – which decreases farmers’ costs and limits environmental impact.
“The University of Florida is very fortunate to have the fastest supercomputer in higher education, and these LIFT AI projects are great examples of leveraging this resource for the benefit of our stakeholders” said Robert Gilbert, UF/IFAS dean for research and executive director for academic affairs.
All of the chosen research projects include plans for quickly getting the research out to farmers and stakeholders, such as via UF/IFAS Extension’s community outreach, via specific commodity group community networks, or open-source software applications for the public to use. The projects also include entrepreneurship training to foster technology transfer and new public-private partnerships through their discoveries.
The full list of the 2026 LIFT AI recipients include:
- Ryan Klein, assistant professor in the School of Forest, Fisheries and Geomatics Sciences, received $50,000 for his proposal, “AI in Urban Landscaping.”
- Changying Li, professor in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, received $66,104 for his proposal, “Enhancing Blueberry Pollination Success through Floral Phenology Mapping and Bee Tracking.”
- Bala Rathinasabapathi, professor in the Department of Horticultural Sciences, received $70,185 for his proposal, “AI-Guided Solutions for Breeding Peppers Suitable for Machine Harvesting.”
- Katia Viana Xavier, assistant professor at the Everglades Research and Education Center in the Department of Plant Pathology, received $60,552 for her proposal, “AI-Driven Solutions for Sustainable Agriculture in the Everglades: Early Disease Detection and Decision Support Systems.”
- Ethan White, professor in the Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, received $74,970 for his proposal, “Automated AI Solutions for Airborne Biodiversity Monitoring Using Generative AI and Cross-View Training.”
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ABOUT UF/IFAS
The mission of the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) is to develop knowledge relevant to agricultural, human and natural resources and to make that knowledge available to sustain and enhance the quality of human life. With more than a dozen research facilities, 67 county Extension offices, and award-winning students and faculty in the UF College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, UF/IFAS brings science-based solutions to the state’s agricultural and natural resources industries, and all Florida residents.
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