Extension Focused Artificial Intelligence to Aid Ohio Soybean Producers

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools have the potential to aid farmers in making on-farm decisions related to crop production, integrated pest management, nutrient use and application, and other farm-management decisions. University extension systems are uniquely positioned to provide high-quality, localized data and agronomic content needed to make generative AI tools reliable for farmers. This project developed the Buckeye Bean BOT, a domain-specific artificial intelligence agent tailored for Ohio soybean producers, leveraging Ohio State University (OSU) Extension and research resources to produce agronomic recommendations aligned with Ohio’s environmental conditions and production systems. The BOT was developed using a transformer-based large language model architecture and fine-tuned with a curated dataset of OSU Extension publications, agronomic research reports, fertilizer and crop management guides, and relevant digital repositories. A structured evaluation was conducted by OSU Extension professionals and agronomists to assess scientific accuracy, relevance to Ohio-specific conditions, and consistency with OSU recommendations. The Buckeye Bean BOT provides regionally relevant agronomic recommendations while emphasizing human oversight and iterative refinement. The project illustrates a framework for integrating extension research-based resources into AI systems and positions AI as an augmentation, not an automation, of extension work.