Herald-Whig (Aug. 12) -- A robot developed by the U. of I. to scan crop plants in the field received an award at a recent robotics conference. “There's a real need to accelerate breeding to meet global food demand,” says agricultural and biological engineering professor Girish Chowdhary, whose team developed the robot. "In Africa, the population will more than double by 2050, but today the yields are only a quarter of their potential."