Alla Petriaieva's Avatar
published in Blogs
Mar 05, 2021

MIT scientists say computers are the future of agriculture

The word ‘agriculture’ connotes certain images: workers toiling under the sun, vast fields of crops, tractors, and plows. It’s a world apart from shiny Silicon Valley, but technology has always been as integral to agriculture as any other sector, where new equipment and techniques can maximize efficiency, safety, and crop yield. Now gleaming computers and dusty fields are merging – and potentially changing agriculture as we know it.

A team of researchers from MIT Media Lab’s Open Agriculture Initiative published a paper detailing a recent study where machine learning algorithms were used to optimize growing conditions for basil plants (with an eye on more expansive future use cases). The burgeoning field – called “cyber agriculture” by the scientists – combines a variety of disciplines to grow the most flavorful, disease-resistant crops possible in a given environment.

“Our goal is to design open-source technology at the intersection of data acquisition, sensing, and machine learning, and apply it to agricultural research in a way that hasn’t been done before,” says Open Agriculture director and MIT Media Lab principal research scientist Caleb Harper. “We’re really interested in building networked tools that can take a plant’s experience, its phenotype, the set of stresses it encounters, and its genetics, and digitize that to allow us to understand the plant-environment interaction.”

Open Agriculture performs the studies in its warehouse headquarters at MIT-Bates Laboratory. Inside are specially-retrofitted shipping containers, designed “so that environmental conditions, including light, temperature, and humidity, can be carefully controlled.” The ability to artificially control conditions in these “food computers” has already yielded unexpected insight – the researchers’ initial study of basil plants revealed the plants had the best flavor after being exposed to round-the-clock light. “You couldn’t have discovered this any other way,” said John de la Parra, one of several co-authors of the study and an OpenAg research lead.

The burgeoning field of cyber agriculture has long suffered from siloed information, making MIT’s commitment to open-source tools especially significant. Equally so is their use of machine-learning algorithms, developed in conjunction with Cognizant, that “evaluated millions of possible combinations of light and UV duration, and generated sets of conditions that would maximize flavor, including the 24-hour daylight regime.”

Researchers have now set their sights on “developing basil plants with higher levels of compounds that could help to combat diseases such as diabetes” without any genetic modification while continuing to explore the effects of different environmental features. De la Parra calls the paper “the archetype” for future large-scale applications of the tools, as well as an opportunity to study climate change adaptation in far quicker, controlled ways than in nature. More insight will surely be gleaned from further study, but initial returns are clear: the future of agriculture may very well mix analog and digital realms for the best results.

Looking for Fresh Investment Ideas? See How Algorithms and A.I. Can Help

Want to invest and/or diversify your portfolio but unsure where to start? Artificial Intelligence can help! Tickeron has developed user-friendly Artificial Intelligence tools to help new and experienced investors generate investment ideas. Tickeron’s A.I. is capable of evaluating a portfolio and providing a “Diversification Score,” to tell the user how well-diversified their portfolio is. It can also generate investment ideas for a user’s 401(k) plan – even if you’re just getting started! The A.I. will give you ideas based on your risk tolerance, investment objectives, and the investment options available.

Tickeron’s new financial website is available to beginners, intermediate investors, and even experts and advisors. Explore tickeron.com today.

Related Tickers: IYW
John Jacques's Avatar
published in Blogs
May 16, 2022
A.I. Stock Market Predictions: Head & Shoulders

A.I. Stock Market Predictions: Head & Shoulders

Statistics for the Head-and-Shoulders Bottom Pattern The days where only hedge funds used algorithms to trade stocks are officially over. Now retail investors can use Artificial Intelligence (A.I.  Here’s an example of the algorithm in action: Late last year, Tickeron’s A.I.
Edward Flores's Avatar
published in Blogs
Apr 29, 2022
How to Become the Millionaire Next Door

How to Become the Millionaire Next Door

The Golden Gate Bridge is always a fixture of these walks too, one of man's most beautiful creations.  As we were walking, at one point she turned to me and said, "Man, I'll never have a million dollars."" My girlfriend is 27 years old and works as a graphic designer, making about $75,000 a year.
Sergey Savastiouk's Avatar
published in Blogs
May 16, 2022
When Is the Next Recession Coming?

When Is the Next Recession Coming?

However, we also know that economists predicted 22 recessions out of 11 that took place since 1945. Are there real recession signs we should watch for?Indeed, the answer is yes, and here are a few very important ones: The first one is almost obvious and known to everyone – it is the Fed.
Sergey Savastiouk's Avatar
published in Blogs
Mar 14, 2023
How to Start Trading Penny Stocks

How to Start Trading Penny Stocks

Penny stocks have long been marginalized within the professional investment community, oftentimes being painted with a broad brush of simply being “too risky.” Leonardo DiCaprio’s depiction of the penny stock peddling conman, Jordan Belfort, in the Wolf of Wall Street certainly didn’t help.Here are four reasons to start trading them now. Reason #1: Let’s State the Obvious -- Penny Stocks are Cheap A single share of Apple Inc. costs over $350.
Dmitry Perepelkin's Avatar
published in Blogs
Mar 14, 2023
5 Habits that Lead to Successful Investing

5 Habits that Lead to Successful Investing

To consistently make money in this industry, you need emotional fortitude, an analytical mind, and a willingness to self-reflect. Despite trading and investing being two different activities, these principles can be applied to both.Conversely, investors with good habits often become great traders.  Rather than full sentences for titles, we’ve labeled each of our top-five investing habits using a single word principle.
Sergey Savastiouk's Avatar
published in Blogs
Mar 13, 2023
4 Tips for Fast, Effective Stock Analysis

4 Tips for Fast, Effective Stock Analysis

With just a few clicks, an investor can search for individual stocks, categories of stocks, sectors, or investment themes, and then he or she can conduct a full range of technical and fundamental analysis within seconds.All powered by Artificial Intelligence.  Below, we give you 5 tips for fast, effective stock analysis using Tickeron’s Screener.
Sergey Savastiouk's Avatar
published in Blogs
Mar 20, 2023
5 Golden Principles in Investing

5 Golden Principles in Investing

You have enough faith in that stock, based on research, that the return will equal or exceed the investment.  Do unto others.The principles outlined here will ensure that happens.  Principle #1: Diversification Investors can’t be one-dimensional when constructing a portfolio.
Sergey Savastiouk's Avatar
published in Blogs
Mar 15, 2023
The five most important Lessons Learned After 10,000 hours of Trading
Edward Flores's Avatar
published in Blogs
Mar 12, 2023
What's the Difference Between Tokens and Altcoins?

What's the Difference Between Tokens and Altcoins?

Between their inherently technical nature, multiple varieties and sub-varieties, and endless terminology, cryptocurrency (defined here as digital or virtual currencies that are encrypted using cryptography, powered by the immutable digital ledger known as the blockchain) represents a whole, complex world.All altcoins possess their own blockchain, independent from their source code, that records all transactions of their native coins. Many altcoins are variants, or forks, of Bitcoin that leverage that cryptocurrency’s open-source protocol as the basis.
John Jacques's Avatar
published in Blogs
Apr 29, 2022
How Machines and Humans Can Work Together

How Machines and Humans Can Work Together

We use devices every day that incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) – to the point where certain actions, like communicating with digital “assistants,” have become second nature.Books and movies tell us that AI will not only replace our jobs, and by extension, our livelihoods – it will eventually replace us, too. While there is historical precedent for job loss following adoption of new technologies, experts insist that we should not be looking at AI as ‘machine versus human,’ but rather as machine plus human.