The University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences will build a 19,000-square-foot artificial intelligence (AI) hub at the Gulf Coast Research and Education Center in Balm, Fla.
The Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture will serve as a world-class research, extension and development facility, according to a news release.
“The center will be our most important facilities investment in a generation,” Scott Angle, senior vice president of agriculture and natural resources and the administrative leader of UF/IFAS, said in the release. “It will add momentum to a movement. It will be a declaration that Florida’s farmers are in the vanguard of feeding the world in a more sustainable way and the epicenter of accelerated evolution of agriculture from human labor-intensive to technology driven.”
AI and robotics can autonomously accomplish many tasks that traditionally require manual labor. By developing these technologies, AI can increase the number of technology-driven, competitive-paying jobs on the farm, the release said.
At the hub, AI scientists will work with researchers throughout UF/IFAS to study ways to breed plants that resist pests and disease, thus boosting crop yields for farmers, the release said.
Center Director Jack Rechcigl and his associate director, Nathan Boyd, have been planning the AI hub for well over a year, according to the release.
Plans call for a state-of-the-art research shop, equipped with everything needed to design and build robotic technologies for agriculture, the release said.
Rechcigl estimates the center will directly employ 65 people, including computer scientists, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, AI specialists, graduate students and support staff, according to the release.
