Plant disease is one of the greatest threats to the environmental and financial sustainability of crop production worldwide. To mitigate these losses, United States farmers apply over one billion tons of pesticides annually. While critical to modern agriculture, pesticide overuse threatens biodiversity. Dr. Gold’s Grape and Specialty Crop Sensing, Pathology, and Extension Lab at Cornell AgriTech (GrapeSPEC2) seeks to leverage remote sensing’s rich history in early warning to reduce these losses in domestic grape by studying the fundamental and applied science of plant disease sensing. Dr. Gold will speak about her lab’s efforts to develop high spectral- and spatial- resolution spectroscopic measurements and imagery, sourced from a range of deployment levels from autonomous ground robots to constellation satellite networks, into open access, disease surveillance and management intervention decision support.

Dr. Kaitlin (Katie) Gold is newly appointed Assistant Professor of Grape Pathology at Cornell University where she holds the primary research and extension responsibilities for grape disease management for New York state. Katie’s research combines plant pathology, machine learning, and remote sensing to study the fundamental and applied science of plant disease sensing to improve early disease detection and sustainable integrated management. 

The Cornell Institute for Digital Agriculture (CIDA), a faculty led initiative focused on creating a strong voice in the emerging area of Digital Agriculture (DA), invites Asst. Professor Gold to present her research for CIDA’s monthly seminar series.