Statistician Yanming Di is working to modernize an outdated system for seed purity analysis.
The Willamette Valley is known as the “grass seed capital of the world.” With its ideal climate and soil conditions for growing high-quality grass seed, the region produces more than 90% of the grass seed used in the United States and a significant portion of the global supply.
Being a hub for 500 million pounds of grass seed annually comes with complex challenges, such as outdated testing methods and cumbersome tools — ones that Oregon State University researchers aim to solve. Addressing these problems means farmers would throw less seeds away and have higher quality seed lots.
A multidisciplinary research group is combining expertise in robotics, artificial intelligence, computer science, statistics and crop science to create a modern solution for an outdated system.
“A land grant university is bringing together people with diverse backgrounds and skills to help the people within Oregon. And that is essentially the entire mission of land grant universities,” said OSU Director of Seed Services and collaborator Dan Curry.
For hundreds of years, farmers and scientists have used the same methods to analyze the purity of seed lots. Determined by the amount of weed seeds, unwanted crops and inert materials, seed lot quality impacts every stage of agriculture. To calculate this value, specialized workers use a magnifying glass or microscope to carefully scrutinize a sample. It’s time-consuming, labor-intensive work that invites a degree of human error.
Supported by $255K of grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Oregon Grass Seed Commissions, and the OSU College of Agricultural Sciences, the group aims to develop a computer vision system for real-time, onsite seed analysis — a tool that could revolutionize farming in Oregon and beyond.