Due to the prevention and control measures of COVID-19, College of Biosystems engineering and Food Science host a series of online reports. On 17th August 2021, Dr. Yi Wang, a professor from the Potato and Vegetable Sustainable Production Program at Department of Horticulture, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, gave an academic report entitled " American Potato Industry: Its Current Situation and Future Development."
Her research and extension areas are as follow: (1) make production recommendations on variety selection, planting population, irrigation, fertilization, and storage management of potatoes and vegetable crops; (2) develop cloud-based machine learning tools to predict crop yield, quality, water status, and nitrogen status using in-season remote sensing imagery; (3) investigate innovative technologies and practices to improve the resource use sustainability of vegetable cropping systems including potatoes, snap beans, sweet corn, peas, and dry edible beans; (4) identify strategic practices to build resilience of potato production systems to a changing climate.
At first, Dr. Wang gave a rough introduction of the potato industry, containing world potato production, common potato species, and total certified seed potato acres accepted in the United States. Varieties of potatoes have different processing characteristics, which determine the suit for different potato products. More than 98 percent of farms in the United States are family operations. Large farm operations and a high degree of mechanization are two prominent features of potato production in the United States. The biggest problem they meet is farm labor shortage with the advancement of urbanization. She also introduced the application of smart agriculture in the potato industry, such as irrigation, grading, and packaging. Her group monitored potato fertilizer utilization by collecting data from unmanned aerial vehicles, aircraft and satellites. Meantime, Dr. Wang shared their latest research achievement about the analysis of potato nitrogen stress and production based on hyperspectral technique.
Dr. Wang came up with the thoughts to conclude that the farms' scales will be bigger and bigger, and the application of smart agriculture will be more and more. International cooperation needs to be strengthened for long-term development.