
Florida orange juice is getting a taste of AI.
With the Sunshine State's $9 billion annual citrus crops plagued by a fruit-souring disease, researchers and businesses are tapping AI to help rescue the nation's largest producer of orange juice.
University of Florida researchers are developing AI applications for agriculture. And the technology - computer vision for smart sprayers - is now being licensed and deployed in pilot tests by CCI, an agricultural equipment company.
The efforts promise to help farmers combat what's known as citrus greening, the disease brought on by bacteria from the Asian citrus psyllid insect hitting farms worldwide.
Citrus greening causes patchy leaves and green fruit and can quickly decimate orchards.
The agricultural equipment supplier has seen farmers lose one-third of the orchard acreage in Florida from the onslaught of citrus greening.
It's having a huge impact on the state of Florida, California, Brazil, China, Mexico - the entire world is battling a citrus crisis, said Yiannis Ampatzidis, assistant professor at UF's Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering.
Fertilizing Precision Agriculture Ampatzidis works with a team of researchers focused on automation in agriculture. They develop AI applications to forecast crop yields and reduce pesticide use. The team's image recognition models are run on the Jetson AI platform in the field for inference.
The goal is to use Jetson Xavier to detect the size of the tree and the leaf density to instantly optimize the flow of the nozzles on sprayers for farming, said Ampatzidis. It also allows us to count fruit density, predict yield, and study water usage and pH levels.
The growing popularity of organic produce and the adoption of more sustainable farming practices have drawn a field of startups plowing AI for benefits to businesses and the planet. John Deere-owned Blue River, FarmWise, SeeTree and Smart Ag are just some of the agriculture companies adopting NVIDIA GPUs for training and inference.
Like many, UF and CCI are developing applications for deployment on the NVIDIA Jetson edge AI platform. And UF has wider ambitions for fostering AI development that benefits the state
Last July, UF and NVIDIA hatched plans to build one of the world's fastest AI supercomputers in academia, delivering 700 petaflops of processing power. Built with NVIDIA DGX systems and NVIDIA Mellanox networking, HiPerGator AI is now online to power UF's precision agriculture research. The new supercomputer was made possible by a $25 million donation from alumnus and NVIDIA founder Chris Malachowsky and $25 million in hardware, software, training and services from NVIDIA.
UF is a member of the NVIDIA Applied Research Accelerator Program, which supports applied research in coordination with businesses relying on NVIDIA platforms for GPU-accelerated application deployments.
Deploying Robotic Sprayers Citrus greening has required farmers to act quickly to remove diseased trees to prevent its advances. Many orchards now have gaps in their rows of trees. As a result, conventional sprayers that apply agrochemicals uniformly along entire rows will often overspray, wasting resources and creating unnecessary environmental contamination.
UF researchers developed a sensor system of lidar and cameras for sprayers used in orchards. These sensors feed into the NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier, which can process split-second inference on whether the sprayer is facing a tree to spray or not, enabling autonomous spraying.
The system can adjust in real time to turn off or on the application of crop protection products or fertilizers as well as adjust the amount sprayed based on the plant's size, said Kieth Hollingsworth, a CCI sales specialist.
It cuts down on spraying waste overspray and on wasted material that ultimately gets washed into the groundwater. We can also predict yield based on the oranges we see on the tree, said Hollingsworth.
Commercializing AgTech AI CCI began working with UF eight years ago. In the past couple of years, the company has been working with the university to upgrade its infrared laser-based spraying system to one with AI.
And customers are coming to CCI for novel ways to attack the problem, said Hollingsworth.
Working with NVIDIA's Applied Research Accelerator Program, CCI has gotten a boost with technical guidance on Jetson Xavier that has sped its development.
Citrus industry veteran Hollingsworth says AI is a useful tool in the field to wield against the crop disease that has taken some of the sweetness out of orange juice over the years.
People have no idea how complex of a crop oranges are to grow and what it takes to produce and squeeze the juice that goes into a glass of orange juice, said Hollingsworth.
Academic researchers can apply now for the Applied Research Accelerator Program.
Photo credit: Samuel Branch on Unsplash
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
02/05/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
01/05/2026
January 5 2026, 18:30 (PST) NBCUniversal's Peacock to Be First Streamer to ...
01/04/2026
January 4 2026, 18:00 (PST) DOLBY AND DOUYIN EMPOWER THE NEXT GENERATON OF CREATORS WITH DOLBY VISION
Douyin Users Can Now Create And Share Videos With Stun...
23/03/2026
The Professional Fighters League (PFL) has renewed its multi-year partnership wi...
23/03/2026
The Snow League has named Google Cloud as its Official Cloud and AI Partner. The...
23/03/2026
Chyron has appointed Eric Wolff as Director of Venues Sales, North America. Wolff previously served as Director of Broadcast Operations & Media Production for T...
23/03/2026
Chicago Sports Network (CHSN) and Weigel Broadcasting's WCIU (The U, ch. 26.1) will simulcast 10 Chicago White Sox games during the 2026 season, the compani...
23/03/2026
Cosm has appointed Jon Werbeck as Vice President, Head of Sponsorships. He will report to Corey Breton, Head of Venues, and will focus on corporate sponsorship ...
23/03/2026
CP Communications has announced a partnership with Mark Roberts Motion Control (...
23/03/2026
NAB Show 2026, taking place April 18-22 (exhibits April 19-22) at the Las Vegas ...
23/03/2026
Bay FC and free streaming platform Victory have announced a partnership through...
23/03/2026
Gemini AI models will surface hidden context around pitches, matchups, rare stat...
23/03/2026
Behind The Mic provides a roundup of recent news regarding on-air talent, includ...
23/03/2026
Growing from broadcast engineer to strategic planner, this Ithaca College grad h...
23/03/2026
16 Science-Focused Nonfiction Projects Selected for Funding
LOS ANGELES, CA, March 23, 2026 - The nonprofit Sundance Institute and Sandbox Films announced toda...
23/03/2026
It's been 20 years since Miley Cyrus introduced the world to Hannah Montana,...
23/03/2026
Made entirely from real natural recordings
Aimed at sound designers and editors working in film, TV and game audio, the latest release from BOOM Library com...
23/03/2026
Transcribe sheets, tabs or MIDI from audio files
Klang.io have announced the launch of a new AI-powered software tool that's capable of detecting multip...
23/03/2026
An auxiliary target has been affixed to the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage f...
23/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/03/2026
Pro8mm, the Super 8 experts, provided cameras, Super 8 movie film, and scanning services for Bruno Mars' Risk It All music video. The debut single from Br...
23/03/2026
Matthews, introduces their first aluminum grid clamp collection, engineered for the rigging needs of film, television and live production. Combining light weigh...
23/03/2026
Monday 23 March 2026
Hacks, the multi-Emmy -winning Sky Exclusive comedy, retur...
23/03/2026
Back to All News
Too Hot to Handle: Italy Reignites for a Second Season With th...
23/03/2026
Autonomous agents mark a new inflection point in AI. Systems are no longer limited to generating responses or reasoning through tasks. They can take action: Age...
23/03/2026
RT is sad today to learn of the death of legendary RT Sport broadcaster Michael Lyster, who died this morning aged 71 years.
Kevin Bakhurst, Director-General...
23/03/2026
RT Documentary On One has scooped its first ever dedicated music award. At the 2026 Icelandic Music Awards, composer lfur Eldj rn won Release of the Year in t...
23/03/2026
Inside Sport, Liveline, Morning Ireland and 2FM DRIVE will all be in Prague to bring fans to the heart of the action
Every Moment, Every GenerationRT | FIFA W...
22/03/2026
Free updates now available
VSL have just released some free updates that add some existing features to a selection of libraries in their expansive Synchron ...
22/03/2026
Back to All News
Live-Action Sins of Kujo' Premieres April 2: Main Trailer and Key Art Debut
Entertainment
22 March 2026
GlobalJapan
Link copied to cl...
21/03/2026
Presented to War Child UK's HELP(2) project
The MPG (Music Producers Guild) have announced the launch of the MPG Impact Award, a brand-new honour that w...
21/03/2026
Microtuning support for Arabic, Persian & Turkish scales
The latest release from Best Service brings together a selection of string, wind and percussion ins...
21/03/2026
New campaign from NAATI and SBS CulturalConnect highlights how we all deserve t...
21/03/2026
Statement regarding Rhoda Roberts AO
21 March, 2026
Media releases
SBS is deeply saddened by the passing of Widjabul Wia-bal woman from the Bundjalung Na...
21/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
21/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
21/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
21/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
21/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
21/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
21/03/2026
Cine Gear Connect NY, presented by Universal Production Services, is filling in the slate for a full day of panels, peers, learning the latest, and mixing it up...
21/03/2026
Studio Technologies Debuts New StudioComm System at NAB 2026
Brie Clayton March 20, 2026
0 Comments
StudioComm Model 794 Central Controller and Model ...
21/03/2026
Restoration Christian Fellowship Captures Worship Music Videos with PYXIS 12K
Brie Clayton March 20, 2026
0 Comments
PYXIS' open gate provides cre...
20/03/2026
Net Insight will introduce a JPEG XS solution for full IP environments at NAB Sh...
20/03/2026
LTN has expanded its technology partnership with Harmonic ahead of the FCC's...
20/03/2026
Solid State Logic will preview SSL Live V6.2 at NAB Show, booth C6907. The softw...
20/03/2026
FUJIFILM North America Corporation's Optical Devices Division has announced ...