Photonics (July 31) -- A robot developed at the U. of I. to find genes for high-yielding, hardy traits in the DNA of crop plants was recognized at the Robotics: Science and Systems conference. “There’s a real need to accelerate breeding to meet global food demand,” says Girish Chowdhary, a professor of agricultural and biological engineering at Illinois. “In Africa, the population will more than double by 2050, but today the yields are only a quarter of their potential.”