The CropSmart Digital Twin

The user-inspired CropSmart Digital Twin (CSDT) decision tool will help take the guesswork out of crop management decisions with services that will be easily accessible to users through both web portals and smartphone apps.

Led by George Mason researcher Liping Di, CropSmart is one of seven projects selected to advance to Phase 2 of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Convergence Accelerator, which could provide up to $5 million in funding.

With the Convergence Accelerator, NSF is investing in new technologies that address complex challenges in food and nutrition insecurity. The United States accounts for more than 25 percent of the total grain traded globally, and successful crop production involves smart management decisions.

In Phase 1, Di and his team received $750,000 from NSF to design CropSmart. With Phase 2, they are focusing on an operational release of the tool “so it can be tested and evaluated in a real operational environment and provide services to users,” says Di, director of the Center for Spatial Information Science and Systems at George Mason.

Farmers often depend on their own experience when making decisions, but some will make large investments in commercial instrumentation to measure and collect data on their crops. After making that investment, they must also collect the right data to make a decision. With CropSmart, Di’s team will do this for them, using remote sensing and computer modeling, and covering larger areas at no or very low cost.

The team began testing this year with more than 4,800 end users, Di says. These users represent different agricultural sectors, ranging from individual farmers to farm credit bureaus and other related businesses, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The team is focused on commodity crops, such as wheat, corn, soybeans, and rice. Co-principal investigators on the project include Cenlin He at University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, Jenny Du at Mississippi State University, Haishun Yang at University of Nebraska–Lincoln, and Juan Sesmero at Purdue University.

Sesmero says the first part of the release—CropSmart 1.0—focuses on certain decision points: irrigation, crop condition and yield prediction for supporting farm loan and crop insurance decision-making, and crop mapping and statistics. Over time, the team plans to add additional decision points and conduct comprehensive field testing before they release CropSmart 2.0.

“We use the results of our testing to refine the technology,” says Sesmero.

CSDT will provide three types of products to users: decision-ready information, a “what if” service, and direct management recommendations. The decision-ready information will be delivered to end users for free. The "what if” and direct recommendation services will be provided for a fee and will help fund additional product development and sustain the operation of the tool.