The University of Missouri (Mizzou) Precision and Automated Agriculture Lab (PAAL) is part of the Department of Agricultural Systems Technology in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources. With the focus of agricultural automation, research area involves a large range of targets, including sensing technologies in precision agriculture and phenomics (high throughput crop phenotyping), and mechanical and robotic technologies in crop harvesting, management and breeding. Most research projects will be multidisciplinary, with close collaboration with experts in Engineering, Plant Science (breeding, plant physiology, stress biology), Agronomy and other crop related professionals. By engineering crops with state-of-art technologies, researches will boost the solutions for world hunger and labor issues. 

The missions of PAAL is to discover and develop new technologies for crop production, management and breeding through research, teaching and extension activities. Current research focuses on Integration of emerging sensing systems, robotic technologies, big data analytics and artificial intelligence to improve crop and animal management, production and phenotyping. The objectives include:

(1) Mechanical and automation (robotic) technologies for tree-fruit and row crop management and harvesting

(2) Proximal and unmanned aerial system (UAS)-based remote sensing system for crop scouting and water, nutrition and soil management

(3) Unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) for autonomous field data collection and high throughput phenotyping

(4) Internet-of-things (IoT)-based data-driven decision support system for precision crop management

(5) Big data driven agricultural systems management

• Visit Dr. Zhou at 211 Ag Engineering Building, Columbia, MO 65211 (map)

• Visit PAAL at 248 William C. Stringer Wing, Columbia, MO 65211 (map)

• Send Emails to Dr. Zhou @ zhoujianf@missouri.edu.

• Call 573-882-2495