Crop Intelligence

AMPLIFY is a public-private research platform designed to propel innovation and resource-efficient methods to increase food yields. Created by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at NC State University in 2014, AMPLIFY was conceived as a transdisciplinary, entrepreneurial platform that provides infrastructure to mobilize research and intellectual capacity to solve complex global issues in agriculture. Advances in telemetry, remote sensing, digital imaging, and precision machine guidance systems are generating high-dimensional information that could drive agricultural decision-making at ground level and beyond if we know how to harness it. By pulling together basic and applied expertise from N.C. State’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, College of Sciences, and College of Engineering, AMPLIFY seeks to: (1) model photosynthesis, carbon metabolism, partitioning, water use efficiency, and abiotic stress (2) develop custom multi- and hyper-spectral imaging systems for a seamless, integrated high-throughput phenomics pipeline; (3) fuse remote sensing information to quantify crop phenology, stress indicators, and soil-plant nutrient and water status; (4) model and identify high performance, resilient yield traits and create improved management strategies and decision support tools. Note: AMPLIFY was supplanted by the Plant Sciences Initiative (PSI) in 2019. Links to timely PSI news and events are posted below. We continue to publish under the AMPLIFY banner because its original framework perfectly aligns with the global Agrosphere vision driving our current efforts.