The 2024 ASA, CSSA, SSSA International Annual Meeting was held in San Antonio, Texas, November 10-13, 2024.
The meeting is hosted by the American Society of Agronomy (ASA), Crop Science Society of America (CSSA), and Soil Science Society of America (SSSA). These three scientific associations of soil, crop and agronomic scientists brought together approximately 4,000 of the brightest minds in their fields to share their research.
The event theme, “AI Innovations for a Changing Climate,” focused on the role of AI in soil management, climate-smart farming, and forest mapping. The theme was to inspire change in agronomy, crop and soil sciences to impact scientific advancement.
According to meeting organizers, rapidly changing climate is one of the greatest challenges for modern agriculture around the world. But by leveraging advanced modeling tools, remote sensing, machine vision, autonomous machinery and robots, AI enables improved soil management, climate-smart farming, and accurate forest mapping.
Academic researchers comprise a majority of attendees, though the event includes many opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, including competitions and networking events.
More than 3,000 scientific abstracts covered a wide variety of disciplines. Authors of scientific papers summarized more than 2,500 papers at more than 500 sessions.
“As a first-time attendee to this conference, I was overwhelmed with the flood of excitement and current happenings in the turfgrass industry,” said Jennifer McLendon, M.Ed., SFMA education manager. “The rapid, 15-minute daily oral presentation sessions offered a glimpse into the various areas of scientific research and focus from the past year. The daily poster presentations also extended insight into current research and industry happenings.”
According to McLendon, some of the education sessions that were of interest to the turfgrass industry were as follows:
- “Do Microbial Inoculants Improve Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Turfgrass?” presented by Chiara Ammaturo, Racheal Omoboyejo, Mussie Habteselassie and David Jespersen, University of Georgia and University of Padova, Italy.
- “Potential Gene Editing Targets for Developing Haploid Inducer Lines (HILs) in Warm-Season Turfgrass Species,” presented by Mohammed Kyum and Kevin Kenworthy, University of Florida.
- “Impact of Short-Term Storage Temperature on Coated vs. Non-Coated Turfgrass Seeds,” presented by Parul Mandaland and Ross Braun, Kansas State University.
- “Evolution of Bacillus Licheniformis as a Biostimulant to Improve Drought Tolerance in Agrostis Stolonifera Grown on Greens with Different Soil Types,” presented by Florence Sessoms, Dominic Petrella, Maranda Berger, Tyler VanLandingham and Edward Nangle, The Ohio State University.
- “Hybrid Bermudagrass Dormancy Management in a Cool Season Climate,” presented by Clarissa Peterson, Glenl A. Wear, Ashley Beazer, Caden J. Seely, Neil C. Hansen and Bryan G. Hopkins, Brigham Young University.
- “Influence of Laser Intensity and Pattern for Weed Control in Ornamental Turf,” presented by Juan R. Romero and Shawn Askew, Virginia Tech University.
- “Influence of Crabgrass (Digitaria spp.) on Golf Ball Roll,” presented by James T. Sprague, Molly A. Biggs, Quincy D. Law and Adam W. Thoms, Iowa State University.
According to McLendon, the meeting also covered various industry updates including the president’s report, CSSA board report, C5 editor report, C5 division reports, awards, partner association updates and new business.
The 2025 meeting, now called CANVAS, will be held November 9-12, 2025, in Salt Lake City, Utah. For more information, visit https://www.acsmeetings.org/about
