It used to take plant pathologist Lance Cadle-Davidson and his team months to assess the severity of fungal infections on grape seedlings they were studying. Now, this exacting process might take a few days at most—and they have robots equipped with facial recognition technology to thank for that.

Advancements in microscopic imaging are helping grape breeders take a closer, more accurate look at how plants react to powdery mildew—a common fungal disease that attacks vineyards late in the growing season and can spoil entire harvests. The pathogen is a costly one to tackle: In California, the country’s biggest producer of grapes by far, researchers estimated that powdery mildew growers spend approximately $239 million per year on powdery mildew management, and accounted for 90 percent of their pesticide use.

Now, powerful imaging robots are helping researchers automate some of the most laborious parts of the grape breeding process, which in turn could significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to develop new, disease-resistant varieties. Down the line, growers are banking on these incoming grape cultivars to save them millions in lost crops and pesticide costs, according to a news release from Cornell University, which hosts the grape research collaborative co-directed by Cadle-Davidson.

“What this has opened up is the capability to be strategic about how we develop new varieties,” said Cadle-Davidson. “Not just arbitrarily picking a resistance gene to cross into cultivated grapes, but to pick the one that’s going to work for the longest time. [The technology] is enabling us to do experiments to figure out which two or which three resistance genes will work best together.”

Read the full article about identifying disease-resistant grapes by Jessica Fu at The Counter.