A new method to detect dehydration in plants
Sensors developed by SMART researchers are capable of detecting pH changes in plant xylem enable farmers to detect drought stress up to 48 hours before visible physical symptoms manifest.
Advancing urban tree monitoring with AI-powered digital twins
The Tree-D Fusion system integrates generative AI and genus-conditioned algorithms to create precise simulation-ready models of 600,000 existing urban trees across North America.
Study: Marshes provide cost-effective coastal protection
As climate change accelerates sea-level rise and intensifies storms, marsh-fronted seawalls can provide an economical coastal defense, MIT engineers report.
Teen uses pharmacology learned through MIT OpenCourseWare to extract and study medicinal properties of plants
Inspired by traditional medicine, 17-year-old Tomás Orellana is on a mission to identify plants that can help treat students’ health issues.
Plant sensors could act as an early warning system for farmers
Sensors that detect plant signaling molecules can reveal when crops are experiencing too much light or heat, or attack from insects or microbes.
Study finds lands used for grazing can worsen or help climate change
Too much livestock on a given amount of land can lead to carbon losses, but appropriate numbers can actually help sequester the carbon.
MIT researchers remotely map crops, field by field
The team used machine learning to analyze satellite and roadside images of areas where small farms predominate and agricultural data are sparse.
Building a better indoor herb garden
Randall Briggs ’09, SM ’18 created the GardenByte indoor herb garden to grow crops three times faster than they would outdoors.
How to tackle the global deforestation crisis
Vital forest is cleared every day, with major climate effects. Satellites have revolutionized measurement of the problem, but what can we do about it?
Uncovering how biomes respond to climate change
Postdoc Leila Mirzagholi uses her background in physics to understand global warming's impact on the terrestrial carbon cycle.
3 Questions: Can disused croplands help mitigate climate change?
Assistant Professor César Terrer and recent visiting student Stephen Bell describe how agricultural lands that are no longer productive could play an important role in carbon sequestration.
J-WAFS announces 2023 seed grant recipients
Fifteen principal investigators from across MIT will conduct early work to solve issues ranging from water contamination to aquaculture monitoring and management.
Inaugural J-WAFS Grand Challenge aims to develop enhanced crop variants and move them from lab to land
Matt Shoulders will lead an interdisciplinary team to improve RuBisCO — the photosynthesis enzyme thought to be the holy grail for improving agricultural yield.
MIT PhD students honored for their work to solve critical issues in water and food
Gokul Sampath and Jie Yun have been named 2023-24 J-WAFS Fellows.
A new microneedle-based drug delivery technique for plants
Developed at SMART, the device can deliver controlled amounts of agrochemicals to specific plant tissues for research and could one day be used to improve crop quality and disease management.