The Precision Agriculture Program in the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering (ABEN) aims to address the growing demand from the state and region for research solutions to the digital agriculture and big data challenges facing the agriculture community. There is a growing demand from industry for research and educational outcomes, agricultural growers to information, tools, and training for better managing their production operations, and employers for graduates with in-depth and graduate level training in different areas of digital agriculture and big data. 

The Program is currently leading the region in digital agriculture research. In Spring 2019, ABEN launched the Precision Agriculture major and minor in the nation. The Precision Agriculture team led by Dr. Sun uses unmanned aerials systems, various types of sensors, spectrometers, active optical sensors, RF sensors, robotic systems, etc. Data mining and machine learning software is often used to process data. The team has been collaborating with CCAST to develop the ability to process all the weather, soil, and imagery data collected from various research projects.