Speaker
Description
Global climate change and population dynamics have made the use of cutting-edge digital technologies necessary in the pursuit of improved understanding of their impacts. Envirotyping is a relatively new approach of analyzing and classifying regions of similar environmental signatures. It incorporates multivariate analyses encompassing such diverse factors as soils, climate and weather, vegetation type, topography, and land use, among others. The approach relies upon the availability of earth observation data – primarily from satellite remote sensing – to a large extent. It brings together skills from multiple disciplines such as environmental sciences, data sciences such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, and life sciences. Currently, the primary application of envirotyping is in agriculture for determining and assimilating the effects of the environment on crop or animal health for more environment-friendly, sustainable processes. In conjunction with genotyping and phenotyping, envirotyping also facilitates creation of superior inputs such as seeds by aiding the modern genome-based breeding process. This talk will introduce envirotyping to the audience, along with basics of remote sensing that underlie the envirotyping process pipeline. Specific examples of usage instances will also be presented, making a case for its fast adoption by the agro industry.
