The built-in GPS and sensors that allow you to check real-time tire pressure and oil life in your car. The smart technologies in your home, giving you the ability to talk into your television remote or tell a lamp “off” or “on.”

Think of the advances over the past decade. Think of the next decade – what your car will be able to do even in five years.

The Department of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University, in collaboration with Microsoft, has created the Purdue Food and Agricultural Vulnerability Index online dashboard to quantify the potential risk to the supply of agricultural products as a result of COVID-19 farm and agricultural worker illnesses.

Foodborne illness hits about one in six people in the United States every year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 48 million people in the U.S. get sick due to one or more of 31 recognized pathogens, including E. coli O157:H7, a particularly harsh strain of E. coli.

A dozen years ago, Steve Smith could anticipate the calls coming in from farmers across the state. They’d report when and how much of their crops had been damaged as glyphosate being sprayed on nearby fields caught the wind and landed on their non-resistant tomatoes.

“There’s nothing like starting a new job in field crop pathology right as a new disease hits corn,” said Telenko. “I definitely wasn’t expecting that. I didn’t know anything about tar spot when I first started, but it gave me a unique opportunity to take the lead on something right away.”

Presenting to the agBOT Challenge judges, Elliott Sass and his Purdue teammates looked far from formal. Stains on their pants mapped precisely where they had leaned against their robot as they made final modifications. Though the team was hard at work for months leading up to the event, they made adjustments until the literal last…