Kyle Randall Knipper, Ph.D. 

Irrigated agriculture consumes more than 70% of California’s freshwater resources. However, traditional irrigation systems use weather and crop data that could be outdated by weeks or months. As a result, water waste occurs in a state that frequently experiences drought and is relied on to supply the U.S. with nearly a third of its vegetables and nearly three-quarters of its fruit.

Kyle Knipper, a scientist at the Department of Agriculture, is addressing these critical problems by developing satellite-based models that measure the evaporation of water from the soil and plant surfaces and the release of water vapor from their leaves.

These measurements provide growers with detailed, near real-time information about how much water their crops use, enabling better irrigation scheduling, water usage and crop health.

“Kyle has developed very innovative tools to improve the efficiency and sustainability of water management in agriculture across multiple commodities,” said Tara McHugh, area director of the Agricultural Research Service within the Department of Agriculture and a 2024 Sammies honoree. “It is making a real-world impact on agriculture in ways that are readily adoptable.”

Examples of this real-world impact are two projects called GRAPEX and T-REX, which involve remote sensing of evapotranspiration to preserve groundwater for grapes and tree crops, respectively.

Knipper partnered with E&J Gallo Wineries on GRAPEX, pinpointing the need to automate the use of evapotranspiration data rather than validating it by hand. Gallo was able to reduce water usage by up to 25% in some vineyards.

Economists estimate that using satellite-based evapotranspiration tools for wine grapes, covering 600,000 acres across the state, could lead to a 20% reduction in irrigation.

A similar analysis for almonds—80% of these crops worldwide come from California— would yield average annual water savings equal to 120,000 Olympic-size swimming pools, potentially saving farmers more than $45 million.

“I don’t think it’s going too far to say without Kyle that we wouldn’t have been able to commercialize, because we would need 50 people like Kyle processing data all day,” said Nick Dokoozlian, Gallo’s vice president of winegrowing research.

Knipper also has championed the democratization of these resources through contributions to OpenET, an open-source platform that provides high-resolution evapotranspiration data to a wide array of users. As a result, both large and small farmers of varying technical capacities have access to essential crop water information, leading to better agricultural practices nationwide.

Knipper said growing up on a farm gave him an appreciation for agriculture and farmers. Now, he is giving back by solving farming problems through science.

“There is nothing more rewarding than seeing research we’ve spent years developing become practical tools that growers embrace and use to optimize their resources and produce the food the world needs,” he said.