Stretching approximately 400 miles from north to south, Illinois is home to some of the most fertile soils in the world. Illinois ranks third in the nation for its total acreage of prime farmland, with a staggering 89% of its cropland earning this designation, concentrated mainly in the central three-quarters of the state.
PRI researchers study issues vital to the agricultural industry, providing data and tools that benefit farmers while tackling environmental and waste challenges that support the broader community. Currently, their work is focused on decreasing crop plant pests, tracking weather and soil conditions, and reducing the economic and environmental costs of nutrient loss across Illinois.
Weather & Soil Monitoring
For over 70 years, information on weather, water, and soil conditions essential for farmers before, during, and after the growing season has been available free through the Water and Atmospheric Resources Monitoring (WARM) program. The WARM program has been collecting data since the 1950s. Its website is a unique source of information for Illinois’ agricultural, renewable energy, and construction industries, with thousands of visitors every day.
WARM’s nineteen stations across the state collect data on soil moisture, temperature, and weather conditions as part of the Illinois Climate Network. Daily minimum and maximum soil temperatures are available, as well as hourly temperatures for specific soil depths. Other WARM networks monitor suspended sediment transport in rivers and streams and water levels for reservoirs and shallow groundwater.
The monthly Illinois Water & Climate Summary reports on current and trending water and weather conditions in Illinois and impacts on water resources.
The Crop Degree-Day Calculator tallies heat accumulation throughout the growing season, comparing maximum and minimum temperatures with a base temperature for each crop. The calculator is updated daily through local weather stations. This tool helps users calculate projections on crop development and maturity for their specific location.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Illinois Drought Response Task Force also use WARM data for research, program support, and long-term planning. The National Weather Service uses WARM data to assist in forecasting and tracking severe weather.
Additional weather and climate data, maps, and information are available on the Illinois State Climatologist website.
Crop Plant Pests
PRI arms Illinois growers with information and tools to maintain sustainable, profitable crop production despite longstanding and emerging agricultural pests.
Detection of new pests
Illinois’ central geographic location and superior transportation systems provide significant advantages in trade, commerce, and tourism, but these also create high-risk pathways for the introduction of invasive plant pests, diseases, and weeds.
PRI’s Illinois Cooperative Agricultural Pest Survey Program focuses on early detection and surveillance of harmful or economically significant exotic plant pests, diseases, and weeds that have eluded first-line defense inspections or have been identified as threats to U.S. agriculture or the environment.
The program’s goal is to safeguard U.S. food and environmental security from exotic pests and to detect and prevent the spread of invasive species such as the Asian longhorned beetle, spotted lanternfly, sudden oak death, and others. PRI researchers work with the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Plant Protection and Quarantine and the Illinois Department of Agriculture. If they detect pests, surveys are conducted to determine the extent of the area occupied by the pest.
Pest degree day calculators
Two pest degree day calculators help Illinois commodity and specialty crop growers plan pest control and management efforts more efficiently.
These tools feature seven-day weather forecasts, graphs, and insect emergence maps to track accumulated degree days and light for the most notorious pests, including the corn flea beetle, and the prediction of potential Stewart’s Wilt severity, Japanese beetle emergence, and brown marmorated stink bug activity.
Corn rootworm management
Corn rootworm beetles are the most devastating pests of America’s most valuable crop: corn. Annual yield losses and management costs of western corn rootworms and the closely related northern corn rootworm may exceed $1 billion across the nation’s Corn Belt.
These agricultural pests have evolved resistance to insecticides, annual crop rotation, and every rootworm-specific bacterial toxin engineered into transgenic Bt corn hybrids. Resistance has long been a driver of innovation in rootworm management. Studying mechanisms of adaptive rootworm behavior could reveal new vulnerabilities that may make management tactics more durable and effective.
Insect behaviorist Joseph Spencer has studied the ecology, behavior, biology, and resistance of the western corn rootworm for more than 25 years, making progress in understanding the role of its behavior in pest adaptations to annual crop rotation and Bt corn hybrids. From changes in female egg-laying affinity to patterns of intra- and inter-field movement in Bt corn to startling adaptations of the western corn rootworm microbiota and gene expression in feeding individuals, paying attention to what these pests are doing is a foundation for understanding how to combat them.
Current work studies the status of rootworm resistance to the toxins expressed in Bt corn hybrids. Efforts to improve the adoption of integrated pest management-based controls are aimed at providing sustainable tactics that work for farmers.
Nutrient & Sediment Monitoring
PRI offers research and tools on growing topics that affect producers and the environment, such as excess nutrients and emerging contaminants.
Nitrogen availability in corn fields
Knowing when to apply supplemental nitrogen to corn fields is difficult for producers to determine since it is unclear how spring rainfall affects early-season nitrogen application. Further, excess applied nitrogen is costly and adversely affects the environment.
PRI scientists developed a user-friendly online decision support tool that estimates real-time soil nitrogen availability by simulating crop growth, crop nitrogen uptake, and nitrogen losses. The tool uses soil data from the USDA soil database and hourly weather data from the National Weather Service. Farmers enter their own crop management information into the online tool, and it then helps to increase the efficiency of nitrogen use and decrease fertilizer costs and water pollution.
Capturing nutrients from runoff
PRI scientists study agricultural chemicals, including excess nutrients. Researchers are creating a designer carbon-based biochar that captures phosphorus from tile drain runoff water, recycling it in soils to improve crop growth and prevent the excess nutrients from reaching waterways.
A bioreactor is installed in the field with a biochar-sorption filter so that water running through the tile system is filtered to remove nutrients before they reach lakes and streams. The filter holds biochar, a biomass product that looks like charcoal and is made mostly of carbon with high calcium and magnesium, which traps fertilizer nutrients.
After the fertilizer season, biochar pellets are removed from the channel and the phosphorus-captured biochars are applied to the fields, where they will slowly release phosphorus and other nutrients into the soil. As a result, producers can keep fertilizer costs down and increase crop yields by applying the biochar pellets at optimal times in the growing season.
Emerging contaminants
Applications of organic wastes, including biosolids and effluents from sewage treatment plants, benefit crop production in Illinois, boosting yields and profits while diverting waste from landfills. However, chemicals of environmental concern from that waste, such as pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs) and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), are known to leach into groundwater and may be taken up by plants with potential implications for human health and the environment. Learn more about PRI research on other public health issues, like mitigating the negative impacts of organic waste application to enhance soil health, protect water supplies, and increase food security.
Food Insecurity
PRI researchers conducted farmer focus groups and surveys as part of six pilot projects with partner farms to study the feasibility of a statewide Farm to Food Bank program, which helps farmers donate surplus food to hunger relief agencies.
The pilot projects resulted in donations of nearly 2.5 million pounds of produce that would have otherwise gone to waste, yielding nearly 990,000 meals for people who face food insecurity. Because of these results, the state established a Farm to Food Bank program in 2023, investing $2 million to support already-strained food banks and the farmers who donate food.