With AI Assistance, Scientists Are Pushing Limits of Agricultural Research
AI in Ag Symposium highlighted capabilities of emerging technology
By John Lovett – Sept. 22, 2025
AI IN AG — Aranyak Goswami, a computational biologist with the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, speaks to attendees of the AI in Agricultural Symposium, Sept. 15, in the Don Tyson Center for Agricultural Sciences in Fayetteville. (U of A System Division of Agriculture photo)
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Agricultural scientists are accelerating discoveries with artificial intelligence to move toward more sustainable and resilient agriculture. But there are limitations — not including human imagination.
The inaugural AI in Agriculture Symposium, hosted Sept. 15 by the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, brought more than 150 people together, in-person and online, to hear how AI and machine learning are propelling research in multiple agricultural disciplines, from animal science to biology and robotics. The experiment station is the research arm of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.
“AI and machine learning are indeed pushing the boundaries of agricultural and biological research,” said Aranyak Goswami, a computational biologist and assistant professor with the experiment station. “It allows us to integrate and analyze enormous datasets — from poultry pathogen genomes to cattle gut microbiomes and plant multi-omics — and uncover patterns that traditional methods would simply miss.”
For example, Goswami added, AI models can link genetic variation to disease outcomes or build biological “clocks” that estimate gut maturity in livestock which provide insights with real-world applications in animal health and productivity.
While AI excels at handling scale and complexity, Goswami noted that choosing the right model still depends heavily on human expertise and imagination.
“We need to decide which models make sense for a given biological problem and also ensure that computations are efficient enough not to overwhelm even high-performance computing systems,” Goswami said. “In that sense, AI does not replace human reasoning but rather amplifies it — giving us new tools but still relying on scientists to frame the right questions and interpret the answers responsibly.”
Goswami is a member of the experiment station’s Center for Agricultural Data Analytics and is affiliated with both the animal science and poultry science departments for the Division of Agriculture and the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences at the University of Arkansas.
Making connections
Rich Adams, assistant professor of agricultural statistics within the entomology and plant pathology department, explained how his work integrates statistical learning and comparative biology to investigate how genome structure and function change over time, especially in agricultural and ecological contexts to better understand, for example, plant and insect interactions.
His research group is developing novel methods to better predict evolutionary associations among traits, offering new insights into the mechanisms that drive biological complexity across diverse organisms. Adams said their new estimators demonstrate promise in this area for guarding against statistical outliers and other analytical challenges that complicate genomic analyses.
To complement this work, Adams’ team is also harnessing machine learning advances to study protein diversity shared among plants, fungi, insects and microbes — providing a window into the ways these organisms interact and the broader consequences of those interactions.
“Simple computations for single genes can often be done by hand,” Adams explained. “However, we need far greater computing capabilities for answering these questions at scale. Fortunately for us, we have access to invaluable resources across the division and university, including the Arkansas High Performance Computing Center, which has been critical for supporting this work.”
The AI in Ag Symposium was organized by Samuel B. Fernandes, assistant professor of agricultural statistics and quantitative genetics within the crop, soil and environmental sciences department.
Adams and Fernandes are also both affiliated with the experiment station’s Center for Agricultural Data Analytics.
The event also featured presentations from Girish Chowdhary, associate professor of agricultural and biological engineering, and computer science with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Rohit Sanjay, automation developer with Tyson Foods; Nicholas Ames, principal data scientist, and Erin Gilbert, staff data steward, both with Bayer Crop Science; Alon Arad, director of artificial intelligence and analytics for Walmart Global Tech; and Ana Maria Heilman-Morales, director of NDSU Agricultural Data Analytics at North Dakota State University.
AI in Ag Hackathon
The winning team of the AI in Ag Hackathon, a collaboration with Bayer Crop Science held prior to the symposium, were the Cultiv-AI-tors. The team included the following University of Arkansas graduate students: Amir Hamza Akash and Carlos Eduardo Ramos Bisinotto in statistics; Gabriela Mengez in soil science; and Ved Mani Shukla in computer science.
“The composition of our winning team truly reflects the spirit of our hackathon and symposium,” Fernandes said. “Agricultural challenges can’t be solved by ag knowledge alone. Real breakthroughs happen when diverse minds work together.”
To learn more about the Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website. Follow us on 𝕏 at @ArkAgResearch, subscribe to the Food, Farms and Forests podcast and sign up for our monthly newsletter, the Arkansas Agricultural Research Report. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit uada.edu. Follow us on 𝕏 at @AgInArk. To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit uaex.uada.edu.
About the Division of Agriculture
The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture’s mission is to strengthen agriculture, communities, and families by connecting trusted research to the adoption of best practices. Through the Agricultural Experiment Station and the Cooperative Extension Service, the Division of Agriculture conducts research and extension work within the nation’s historic land grant education system.
The Division of Agriculture is one of 20 entities within the University of Arkansas System. It has offices in all 75 counties in Arkansas and faculty on three campuses.
Pursuant to 7 CFR § 15.3, the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture offers all its Extension and Research programs and services (including employment) without regard to race, color, sex, national origin, religion, age, disability, marital or veteran status, genetic information, sexual preference, pregnancy or any other legally protected status, and is an equal opportunity institution.
STATS AND DATA — Rich Adams, assistant professor of agricultural statistics within the entomology and plant pathology department, explains his work at the AI in Ag Symposium Sept. 15 at the Don Tyson Center for Agricultural Sciences in Fayetteville. (U of A System Division of Agriculture photo)
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