Saving Corn Crops with AI

ARS researchers are helping corn growers save their crops through artificial intelligence (AI). Corn is the most important U.S. crop in terms of total production, with an average value of $79.5 billion over the past 4 years. Quality, yield, safety, and utility of corn are negatively impacted by fungal diseases. In 2024, these diseases reduced corn yield by an estimated 6% in the U.S. Improving disease resistance of this important crop would be tremendously beneficial to U.S. agriculture, but understanding how plants fight off fungal pathogens at the protein level is incredibly challenging.   

ARS researchers in Peoria, IL, and Ames, IA, used AI to develop an interactive online database, called PanEffect, that helps plant breeders and scientists determine how genetic differences in both corn and their fungal pathogens influence disease development. PanEffect is hosted by the Maize Genetics and Genomics Database and includes information on more than 2 million proteins from 50 different types of corn and approximately 300,000 proteins from 22 fungal pathogen species. The database uses AI and computer modeling to predict protein functions, helping scientists design targeted experiments to identify proteins involved in disease development. This exciting new tool is now being used to cost effectively enhance the resistance of corn to diseases, strengthening U.S. agricultural productivity and improving economic outcomes for farmers and rural communities.  

Publications:  
PanEffect: a pan-genome visualization tool for variant effects in maize 
Fusarium Protein Toolkit: a web-based resource for structural and variant analysis of Fusarium species  

Data Links:  
PanEffect Data for Maize 
PanEffect Data for Fusarium