In 2025, the Stavropol State Agrarian University established the world—class Agroengineering of the Future Scientific Center, a large-scale federal project aimed at developing a set of technical means and technologies to realize the potential of yields, increase energy efficiency and environmental friendliness of agricultural production, as well as transfer scientific results to educational programs. The consortium of the center unites FSUE NAMI and Donskoy State Technical University, as well as leading enterprises of the agro-industrial complex.

The center's work is carried out in three key areas. The first is related to the creation of intelligent control systems for greenhouse complexes. Scientists are developing solutions for monitoring plant health, early diagnosis of diseases, detection of nutritional deficiencies, and automation of growing processes using machine vision, artificial intelligence, and neural networks. Within the framework of the direction, pilot tests of an intelligent system for early diagnosis of plant conditions were conducted on the basis of the greenhouse complex of the APH «ECO-Culture». Together with partners from Agropromcifra JSC, a digital platform has been created for collecting, storing, processing and analyzing greenhouse production data. According to the results of the pilot testing, the accuracy of determining the target features was 90 percent. To expand research, an interuniversity consortium has been formed with the participation of St. Petersburg, Voronezh, Kabardino-Balkarian and Ulyanovsk State Agrarian Universities. Since January 2026, research and production sites have been opened in the greenhouse complexes of the project partners. During the implementation of the direction, a data array of more than 20 thousand images of tomatoes in the visible, multispectral and hyperspectral ranges has already been formed.

The second direction of the NCMU is devoted to software and hardware complexes and technologies for the use of unmanned aerial vehicles in agriculture. The purpose of this work is to create technologies for spot application of plant protection products using UAVs and artificial intelligence to analyze remote monitoring data. Together with Inno-Agro JSC and other partners, SSAU is developing neural networks for analyzing multispectral and RGB images taken from drones. To scale up the research, a consortium has been formed that unites 15 agricultural universities distributed across 14 agricultural crops. At experimental sites in the Stavropol Territory, UAVs have already been used to assess the condition of winter wheat crops, a primary array of aerial and ground images has been formed, and experimental schemes for the use of herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides using drones have been developed.

The third area is related to the creation of robotic unmanned systems for horticulture and field production. As part of the project, unmanned transport and technological platforms with a capacity of 130 and 400 horsepower, as well as a complex of mounted and trailed vehicles are being developed. These solutions are designed for field work, automated seeding, fertilization, garden maintenance, and scavenging.

«The work of the world-class Scientific Center „Agroengineering of the Future“ on the basis of SSAU is directly related to the technological sovereignty of the Russian agro-industrial complex. We are creating a complex ecosystem where science, manufacturing and education work together. It is especially important for us that the results of scientific research are implemented in enterprises of the real sector of the economy and at the same time become part of the training of students. This is how personnel and technologies are formed, which will determine the development of agriculture in the coming years,» said Vladimir Sitnikov, Rector of SSAU.

Stavropol State Agrarian University continues to strengthen its position as one of the country's leading scientific and educational centers in the field of agroengineering, digital agriculture and artificial intelligence. NCMU «Agroengineering of the Future» opens up new opportunities for scientists, students, industrial partners and the entire Russian agro-industrial complex. More information about the project can be found in the SSAU video.