Drought Tolerance

Drought Tolerance

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Developing drought tolerant corn that makes efficient use of available water will be vital to sustain the estimated 9 billion global population by 2050. In March 2014, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded the University of Missouri a $20 million grant as part of a multi-institutional consortium to study climate change and how corn maintains plant growth during drought conditions. Using funding from the NSF, Mizzou engineers on a multidisciplinary team have developed a robotic system that is changing the way scientists study climate variability, crops and plant composition.

Gui DeSouza, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and colleagues and students in his Vision-Guided and Intelligent Robotics (ViGIR) Laboratory partnered with researchers such as Felix Fritschi, an associate professor of plant sciences in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources and Todd Mockler, a principal investigator with the Danforth Plant Science Center to study the effects of climate change on crops in Missouri. Using principles developed in the ViGIR lab, DeSouza is changing the way agriculturists collect data in the field.

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