Khot - Precision Ag | Washington State University

^{Dr. Lav Khot} _{Precision Agriculture}

Welcome!

Research Interest

Dr. Khot works in the Agricultural Automation Engineering research emphasis area of the Department of Biological Systems Engineering. His research and extension program focuses on “Sensing and automation technologies for site specific and precision management of production agriculture”. Special emphasis is towards integration of

Crop & Weather Sensing (ground and aerial systems)
Internet-of-Things enabled Cyber Physical Systems
Edge and Cloud Compute driven Decision Support Systems
Smartphone Apps & Information Delivery Technologies
Precision Chemical Application Technologies
Agricultural Machinery, Processes & Data-based Modeling

Brief Bio: Dr. Lav R. Khot is the Director of AgWeatherNet and Professor of Precision Agriculture at CPAAS, Washington State University. Under his leadership, AgWeatherNet is undergoing a major infrastructure upgrade to establish a mesoscale weather sensing network in the state of Washington. This network provides crucial weather data and decision support, enhancing the resilience of Washington’s agriculture, animal, and human health systems. His research and extension program in precision agriculture focuses on integrating advanced sensing and automation technologies to improve the efficiency of irrigated and tree fruit crop production. He has advised over 30 graduate students, postdocs, Fulbright and international scholars as well as over 20 undergraduate interns. His program has published over 200 peer-reviewed research and extension articles, and he has been cited 5,851 times (h-index = 35).

Dr. Khot is playing a leadership role in bringing AI-driven tools in Washington agriculture through the USDA-NIFA funded AgAID Institute, where he co-leads the Farm Operations Intelligence thrust efforts. He is also leading collaborative efforts that has established the first-of-its-kind public-private partnership-driven ‘Smart Apple Orchard Testbed‘ in commercial settings for effective smart ag-tech evaluation and grower education. He continues to serve as an Associate Editor of the Journal of American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineering (ASABE) and has co-organized a special session at the IEEE MetroAgriFor past few years. His programmatic efforts at WSU have been recognized with the 2024 Early Career Excellence Award and the 2024 Team Interdisciplinary Award, as well as the ASABE Educational Aids Blue Ribbon Award, Outstanding Associate Editor, Superior Paper Awards, among others. He is also recipient of Fruit + Vegetable 40 Under 40 (Class of 2021 from Fruit Growers News), and the 2018 New Innovator in Food and Agriculture Research Award from Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research. He was chair of S1069 Multi-State Group (2021) and of the ‘Mechanization, Digitization, Sensing & Robotics’ Working Group of International Society for Horticultural Science (ISHS) (2018-2022).