Cyber-Agricultural Systems Research

Singh’s group leads major initiatives in cyber-physical agricultural systems, integrating layered sensing, robotics, aerial imaging, and artificial intelligence for crop breeding and for real-time crop analysis and management. Sarkar and Singh coined the term “Cyber-Agricultural System” and created the framework for this sub-discipline [See paper: Sarkar S, B Ganapathysubramanian, A Singh, F Fotouhi, S Kar, K Nagasubramanian, G Chowdhary, SK Das, G Kantor, A Krishnamurthy, N Merchant, AK Singh. 2023. Cyber-agricultural systems for crop breeding and sustainable production. Trends in Plant Science. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tplants.2023.08.001%5D. The group has pioneered frameworks for spatio-temporal plant phenotyping and advanced the concepts of smart farm networks, including the SIRAC (Smart Integrated Farm Network for Rural
Agricultural Communities) projects. Outcomes include UAV-based multispectral imaging pipelines, robotic networks for field phenotyping, and digital twin technologies, all driving the frontier of data-driven decision support and precision agriculture. Innovations from CAS are used to bolster variety development including robot-based pod and seed counting, drone based yield estimation and maturity classifications.

Papers of interest:

  • Sarkar S, B Ganapathysubramanian, A Singh, F Fotouhi, S Kar, K Nagasubramanian, G Chowdhary, SK Das, G Kantor, A Krishnamurthy, N Merchant, AK Singh. 2023. Cyber-agricultural systems for crop breeding and sustainable production. Trends in Plant Science. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tplants.2023.08.001
  • Bitgoeul Kim, Samuel W Blair, Talukder Z Jubery, Soumik Sarkar, Arti Singh, Asheesh K Singh, Baskar Ganapathysubramanian. 2025. Soybean maturity prediction using two‐dimensional contour plots from drone‐based time series imagery. The Plant Phenome Journal. 8:1. E70036. https://doi.org/10.1002/ppj2.70036
  • Khosravi M, Z Jiang, JR Waite, SE Jones, HT Pacin, A Singh, B Ganapathysubramanian, AK Singh, S Sarkar. 2025. Optimizing navigation and chemical application in precision agriculture with deep reinforcement learning and conditional action tree.Smart Agricultural Technology. v12: 101194.
    https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2503.17985
  • Chiranjeevi S, M Saadati, ZK Deng, J Koushik, TZ Jubery, DS Mueller, M O’Neal, N Merchant, A Singh, AK Singh, S Sarkar, A Singh, B Ganapathysubramanian. 2025. InsectNet: Real-time identification of insects using an end-to-end machine learning pipeline. PNAS Nexus. 4(1): 575. https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae575
  • Feng J, SW Blair, TT Ayanlade, A Balu, B Ganapathysubramanian, A Singh, S Soumik, AK Singh. 2025. Robust soybean seed yield estimation using high-throughput ground robot videos. Frontiers in Plant Science. v16. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2025.1554193
  • Ganapathysubramanian B, S Sarkar, A Singh, AK Singh. (2025). Digital twins for the plant sciences. Trends in Plant Science. Online 9th Jan, 2025.
  • Fotouhi F, K Menke, A Prestholt, A Gupta, ME Carroll, H-J Yang, EJ Skidmore, M O’Neal, N Merchant, SK Das, P Kyveryga, B Ganapathysubramanian, AK Singh, A Singh, Soumik Sarkar. (2024). Persistent monitoring of insect-pests on sticky traps through hierarchical transfer learning and slicing-aided hyper inference. Front. Plant Sci., Sec. Sustainable and Intelligent Phytoprotection. v15. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2024.1484587
  • Riera LG, ME Carroll,, Z Zhang, JM Shook, S Ghosal, T Gao, A Singh, S Bhattacharya, B Ganapathysubramanian, AK Singh, S Sarkar. 2021. Deep Multiview Image Fusion for Soybean Yield Estimation in Breeding Applications. SPG Plant Phenomics 2021 (9846470). DOI: 10.34133/2021/9846470