Due to the prevention and control measuresof COVID-19, College of Biosystems engineering and Food Science host a seriesof online reports. On 17th August 2021, Dr. Yi Wang, a professorfrom 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 asfollow: (1) make production recommendations on variety selection, plantingpopulation, irrigation, fertilization, and storage management of potatoes andvegetable crops; (2) develop cloud-based machine learning tools to predict cropyield, quality, water status, and nitrogen status using in-season remote sensingimagery; (3) investigate innovative technologies and practices to improve theresource use sustainability of vegetable cropping systems including potatoes,snap beans, sweet corn, peas, and dry edible beans; (4) identify strategicpractices to build resilience of potato production systems to a changingclimate.
At first, Dr. Wang gave a roughintroduction of the potato industry, containing world potato production, commonpotato species, and total certified seed potato acres accepted in the UnitedStates. Varieties of potatoes have different processing characteristics, whichdetermine the suit for different potato products. More than 98 percent of farmsin the United States are family operations. Large farm operations and a highdegree of mechanization are two prominent features of potato production in theUnited States. The biggest problem they meet is farm labor shortage with the advancementof urbanization. She also introduced the application of smart agriculture inthe potato industry, such as irrigation, grading, and packaging. Her group monitoredpotato fertilizer utilization by collecting data from unmanned aerial vehicles,aircraft and satellites. Meantime, Dr. Wang shared their latest research achievementabout the analysis of potato nitrogen stress and production based on hyperspectraltechnique.
Dr. Wang came up with the thoughts toconclude that the farms' scales will be bigger and bigger, and the applicationof smart agriculture will be more and more. International cooperation needs tobe strengthened for long-term development.