Dr. Nadia Shakoor, Pioneer in Digital Agriculture

 March 10, 2021 – As we celebrate Women’s History Month at Discovery Park, we are making people aware of the women who have changed history, made scientific breakthroughs, overcome seemingly insurmountable adversity and inspired the generations after them to see beyond.

Dr. Nadia Shakoor is a senior research scientist at The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri, and a pioneer in digital agriculture. She and her team are developing FieldDock, an integrated smart farm system that will collect and analyze real-time data from fields, allowing for effective tracking of crop performance.

We expect the FieldDock to transform the way crop scientists, breeders and farmers interact with agricultural technology and have a significant impact on the sustainability of food production.

While working on the FieldDock project, Dr. Shakoor needed a data-collection instrument that did not exist yet — so she invented one. The PheNode is a 100 percent solar-powered device with environmental sensors that monitor the soil, temperature, humidity, air pressure, wind speed, wind direction, rainfall and more for researchers. Automated systems like the FieldDock will pioneer breakthrough for rapid advancement in digital agriculture and play a pivotal role in farms of the future. An example of Dr. Shakoor’s PheNode is on display in Discovery Park’s “AgriCulture: Innovating for Our Survival” exhibit in the Simmons Bank Ag Center.

For more blog posts click here.