In an innovative stride towards sustainable agriculture, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Cornell University have leveraged advanced technology to mitigate plant diseases by facilitating their early detection. They used a high-tech tool from NASA, the AVIRIS-NG, to detect early indicators of a grape disease that causes significant crop damage each year. Plant diseases are a significant global threat, destroying between 15 to 30% of harvests every year, comprising molds, bacteria, and viruses. Among these pathogens, GLRaV-3, a virus primarily transmitted by insects, leads to significant yield reduction and fruit quality deterioration, inflicting around $3 billion in losses to the U.S. … Continue reading Saving Crops with Space Tech: NASA’s JPL and Cornell Take On Plant Diseases