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CapitalPress.com
Friday, January 28, 2022
Idaho Innovators
Artifi cial intelligence IDs insects
By BRAD CARLSON
Capital Press
Artifi cial
intelligence
promises to make identify-
ing insects faster and eas-
ier, the University of Idaho’s
Marek Borowiec and his
research teammates believe.
USDA’s National Insti-
tute of Food and Agriculture
agreed. In April, the institute
awarded Borowiec’s team
a Cyberinformatics Tools
grant for $499,500.
The project, aimed at har-
nessing artifi cial intelligence
to identify insects, will aid
integrated pest management
in small-grain production.
“The motivation here is
essentially to make the pro-
cess a little bit more effi -
cient and easier for growers,
and potentially the exten-
sion researcher or educa-
tor,” Borowiec said. “We
want to come up with a sys-
tem that will assist in iden-
tifying, correctly document-
ing and sharing information
about pests.”
Successful IPM hinges
on correct insect identifi ca-
tion. But since it requires
time and expertise, many
growers forgo it and apply
pesticides unnecessarily.
Immediate insect identi-
fi cation and classifi cation is
one element of the planned
system. Information shar-
ing via a free mobile app
Cereal grass aphids.
MAREK BOROWIEC
Title: Assistant professor, entomology, plant pathology and
nematology, University of Idaho.
Education: Bachelor’s and master’s degrees, University of
Wroclaw, Poland; Ph.D., University of California-Davis.
Courtesy of Aryn Baxter
Marek Borowiec is working on a new system that will allow farmers to quickly and
easily identify insects.
is another. It will focus on
the Inland Northwest but
be designed so it can be
extended to other regions.
Borowiec, an assistant
professor of entomology,
plant pathology and nema-
tology, said growers would
immediately be able to
see the correctly identifi ed
insect, follow what other
farmers in their region are
experiencing, access online
resources and connect with
specialists.
Now, when they see an
unfamiliar insect on a crop
they have to contact a uni-
versity extension agent or
other researcher. He said
smartphones, online alert
networks and information
portals help but require iden-
tifi cation,
documentation
and other steps that can take
time.
The artifi cial intelligence
is “basically the capacity to
attach a certain name or clas-
sifi cation to a photograph,”
feasible for computers only
in the past four to fi ve years.
The problem is complex
since a photo includes many
variables, ranging from
angle and background to the
subject’s size, position and
distance.
Researchers will collect
images of insects on cere-
als and legumes. The images
will be used to “train” an arti-
Age: 36
Hometown: Moscow, Idaho.
Family: Engaged to Aryn Baxter, lecturer on education in
leadership for organizations, University of Dayton.
Hobbies: Outdoor activities including hiking, trail running,
skiing.
Research team: Arash Rashed, Sanford Eigenbrode and
Lucas Sheneman, and postdoctoral researcher Subodh
Adhikari.
fi cial-intelligence algorithm.
For example, photos of
cereal grass aphids — an
important emerging pest,
Borowiec said — and the
English grain aphid were
used to “train” a preliminary
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version.
“You have to have lots
of examples of these pests
in photos so it can learn the
important features,” he said.
Later in the four-year
project, researchers will
design the free identifi cation
and analysis tool, get feed-
back from stakeholders and
work on improvements.
“On a parallel track, we
plan to collect more data and
more images to make the ID
algorithm work better and
make the interface friendly
to users,” Borowiec said.
An advisory board to
include cereal crop grow-
ers and possibly commodity
commission representatives
is planned.
The system “has the
potential of being as accu-
rate or more accurate than
a human expert, with a frac-
tion of the time needed for
making a determination,” he
said. It aims to enable farm-
ers to more quickly opti-
mize pesticide management
decisions.
“The idea is to not have
to work as hard to improve
your decision process, be
more likely to make a good
decision, and even save
some money,” he said.
This story fi rst appeared
May 21, 2021.
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