Image and information credits go to the article published in Potato Country written by Max Feldman, Collins Wakholi, Devin Ripper (all of USDA-ARS) and Bhoja Basnet (Breeding Insight).
Excerpt from the article:
“Artificial intelligence (AI) may offer solutions to some of the diverse challenges faced in agriculture. AI is a bit of a catch-all term used to describe predictive modeling, classification, computer vision, natural language processing and autonomous system computing. Practically speaking, these tools enable us to forecast yield or profits from sample observations, identify product quality flaws, extract insights from text data and deploy self-driving equipment like tractors and drones. Recent advancements in both computing and hardware and accessibility are driving the rapid adoption of this technology in many sectors of our economy.”
This innovative collaboration between Breeding Insight, USDA-ARS potato breeders and AI is featured on the front page of Potato Country publication (July/August 2025). USDA-ARS scientists Max Feldman, Collins Wakholi, Devin Ripper and Breeding Insight scientists Bhoja Basnet and Tyr Wiesner-Hanks collaborated on this incredible project.
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“ARS scientists like Max and Collins are really pushing the envelope when it comes to new breeding technologies. They’ve built an incredible tool to extract and process a vast amount of data with the speed, throughput and reliability needed for applied breeding. It was a pleasure working with them to add new machine learning tools tot he platform that will help breeders find the best potato varieties for U.S. growers’ needs.”
—Tyr Weisner-Hanks, Biometrics Coordinator at Breeding Insight—
