CHANGING WHAT S POSSIBLE NEW HORIZON FOR TERRESTRIAL CARBON SEQUESTRATION NATIONAL ACADEMIES OF SCIENCE WORKSHOP 19 SEPTEMBER 2017 Joe Cornelius, PhD U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy
IMAGINE! Direct Carbon Sequestration Technology: No Capital Cost Market-Pull Scale
BIO-Sequestration: Agriculture Capital: Seeds are software. Market: Carbon is currency. Scale: Genetics are distributed.
Program Vision: TERRA and ROOTS THE CONVERGENCE OF BIOLOGY, ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE CROPS, BOTS, BYTES Selecting for Crop Yield and Soil Quality Crop Genetics Data Analytics Gene and Trait Associations Digital Ag High Performance Computational Pipelines Agronomy Machine Learning High Resolution Phenotypes Phenotype = Genotype Environment x Management Autonomous, Scalable & Deployable Field Sensors High Throughput Data Acquisition Field Robotics
TERRA - ROOTS PROGRAM POTENTIAL (U.S. Managed Crop Acres) CO 2 : Increase Soil Carbon Stocks 1.0 Gt CO 2-eq / year N 2 O: 50% annual reduction from row crop 0.1 Gt CO 2-eq / year Soil Quality: Chemical, Physical, Biological Increased Productivity Enhanced Crop Resilience Improved National Security Comparison: Transportation Sector = 27% US Emissions ~1.7 Gt CO 2-eq / year
Payload, Precision and Power CROPS BOTS BYTES Diverse Portfolio of Platforms PHENOTYPES SENSORS COMPUTATIONS GENETICS ENVIRONMENTS Field Reference Platform Crop Science Hubble Deployable Field Gantry Inside Canopy Measurements Ground Based Rovers Remote and Contact Sense Smaller, Faster, Smarter Fixed & Rotary UAV Throughput Micro Mini-Bots Disperse Size, Speed and Cost 5
TERRA PUBLIC REFERENCE DATA TESTBED CHANGING WHAT S POSSIBLE Ag S Hubble Reference field phenotyping platform, generates high quality open-source data, identifies optimal sensor suits and tests new sensor technologies. WORLD S LARGEST FIELD ROBOTICS PLATFORM PHENOTYPES AMERICAS CROPS YEAR ROUND
Crops Bots Bytes Demonstrated Proof of Concept Field Deployable HIGH RESOLUTION Ground Platforms Automated Detection: Leaf Biotic & Abiotic Stress Raw Image Scored: Blemish, Pest Sugar cane aphid Raw Image Scored: Color, Necrosis Raw Image Gradient Derivative Stalk Diameter
Crops Bots Bytes Demonstrated Proof of Concept Deployable HIGH THROUGHPUT Aerial Platforms UAV-Sensor Platform Breeder Field Plots LIDAR Height Map Plant Height, Leaf Area and Crop Architecture Aerial platform and innovative computational modeling for full season trait monitoring. UAV LIDAR sensor creates crop height maps with excellent correlation to ground truth measurements. 150x faster than manual data collection. UAV data collection in sorghum breeding trials at University of California Kearney Agricultural Research Center (KARE). Flown and processed by Blue River Technology
BRT Deployable HIGH THROUGHPUT Aerial Platform Drone-based LiDAR over sorghum breeding trials at Kearney Agricultural Research Center (KARE). Flown and processed by Blue River Technology
Soil Carbon Capture SOIL CARBON CAPTURE Big Technological Challenges.. Sensor Solutions from Medical, Aerospace, Energy, Mining and Military C Photosynthesis Partition Respiration Exudation Root Architecture Depth & Spread Diameter & Density Carbon Partition Flux Quantity Chemistry Soil Structure Profile Porosity & Particle Size Water & Nitrates 11
Platform Scalability Soil Carbon Capture SOIL CARBON CAPTURE Diverse Portfolio of Technologies PHENOTYPES SENSORS COMPUTATIONS GENETICS ENVIRONMENTS Root Pulling Force Scanalyzer Roots Electrical Impedance Plant Micro Needle Root Laser Ablation Tomography Soil Carbon Nitrogen Plant Nitrate Soil Nitrate Soil Micro GC Leaf X-Ray Fluorescence Root X-Ray Computed Tomography Soil Neutron API Root Thermo Acoustic Root X-Ray Backscatter Root-Soil LF-MRI Technical Risk Corn Sorghum Switchgrass Wheat Soil
Soil Carbon Capture X-Ray Backscatter Repurpose non- destructive, non-invasive X-Ray technology used in NASA defect detection with DOE Switchgrass common garden Mesocosm -> Common Garden Image Processing Genomic Selection
Soil Carbon Capture Thermo-Acoustic Imaging Radio waves induces heating an ultrasonic signal Point Source Acoustic Signal overcome RF limit Microwave
Soil Carbon Capture Microneedle and Micro GC In field physiological monitoring plant, soil and microbial Plant level monitoring products of photosynthesis Soil sensors measure gas release and nitrate Pharmaceutical Technology Microneedle Array
Soil Carbon Capture Robotic Root and Soil Phenotyping 16
Next Steps: Connect Consumers to Producers Drive farmer adoption and supply chain enrollment: Advance high yielding sustainability traits (no compromise) Deploy small, distributed, low cost, on-farm sensor networks Soil Carbon, Nitrogen, Water and Land Use Accounting Rapid monitoring of carbon stock changes Quantify ecosystem services Microbiome monitoring in situ Imagine! 17
THANK YOU TERRA High Throughput Above-Ground Phenotyping ROOTS Root Phenotyping and Soil Measurement 18