Inspiration

What it does

How we built it

Washington is the backbone of the nation’s fruit production, providing over 60% of the country's apples. However, 2025 and 2026 have brought record-breaking droughts and shrinking snowpacks to the Palouse and the Yakima Valley.

As the climate shifts, so do the threats. Heat-stressed crops are more vulnerable to "stealth" pests and diseases that thrive in warmer, drier conditions. We realized that while large-scale industrial farms have expensive sensors, the average Washington grower still relies on manual scouting—walking the rows and hoping they catch a blight before it wipes out a block.

We were inspired to build CropGuard AI to bridge this gap. We wanted to take the world-class expertise found at WSU’s agricultural research centers and put it into the pocket of every farmer. By combining Google's Gemini vision capabilities with real-time local weather data, we created a tool that doesn't just see a sick leaf—it understands the environmental crisis behind it.

Our goal is simple: To help the Evergreen State stay green by making precision agriculture accessible to everyone.

Challenges we ran into

Accomplishments that we're proud of

What we learned

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