Built by the University of Illinois-led AIFARMS institute, CropWizard draws on hundreds of thousands of Extension publications and research papers, including more than 10,000 from the University of Arizona, and cites its sources.

United Food Bank, which serves the East Valley and Pinal County, says demand has climbed 61% in three years. A planned Mesa warehouse expansion would add freezers and coolers so more fresh food can reach families.

Advent Lutheran Church in Maple Grove started its Giving Gardens with one volunteer and one plot in 2007. Today 78 plots feed families, many of them refugees, and there is a waiting list to get in.

Seven students at Japan’s Maizuru College built Kotonoha, a soil sensor and phone app that turns moisture and fertilizer readings into a chat with your bonsai. It won an agriculture minister’s award at a national deep learning contest, and the team now hopes to sell it overseas.

Gilbert Water Conservation’s free fall workshops run through Nov. 21 at the Southeast Regional Library, with classes on reading your water meter, harvesting rainwater, figuring out how much to water, and programming the controller that runs it all.

With a nearly $600,000 USDA grant, Case Western Reserve University’s Erman Ayday and the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Alfonso Morales are developing a privacy-first “sandbox” where AI can learn from farm data without exposing who the farmers are or what they paid. Here is how it works and what it has not yet proven.

Chandler’s Celebration of Arbor Day on Saturday, Nov. 7, at Folley Memorial Park offers one free native 5-gallon tree per resident household, planting advice and family activities, with the library’s mobile Discovery Library on site. Here is what to know, and how to get a new tree through its first year.

Researchers at Southern Illinois University Carbondale found that drone cameras missed frogeye leaf spot on the undersides of soybean leaves. Their answer is a four-wheeled robot with cameras aimed up and down the plant, and the next job is teaching its AI what to look for.

The Apache Junction Public Library’s free Seed Up Meet Up on Tuesday, Nov. 10, pairs a seed-packing session with Master Gardeners, a look at Earth Heart Park & Community Garden, and a talk on monarchs and milkweed. Here is what to know before you go, and how to plant milkweed in the low desert this fall.

FloraCount, built by Penn State’s Center for Pollinator Research, combines a 10-minute bee count with AI that measures flower area from a photo. Here is how it works, what the research behind it found, and what desert gardeners should keep in mind before trusting a score.

Rogue Rhino Gardens on Rattlesnake Road is hosting the Rogue Rhino Foundation’s fall fundraiser on Saturday, Nov. 7, with a panel on soil, water and growing food in the desert. Here is who is speaking, what the foundation does with the money, and what to know before you buy a ticket.

Researchers in northeast India built NitroMate, an Android app that estimates a strawberry plant’s nitrogen from leaf photos and tells a drip system how long to run. In a season-long field test, yields came out close to a fixed fertilizer schedule, but the app applied about 3.5 times as much nitrogen. The team says the diagnosis worked better than the dosing math.

Desert Horizon Nursery in Queen Creek is holding a free Citrus Success class on Saturday, Nov. 7, covering planting, watering, pruning, fertilizing and disease, followed by a free houseplant class on Nov. 14. Here is what the classes cover, how to RSVP, and what University of Arizona citrus research says about fall and winter care.

Common Ground Ministries in Beaver Meadows, Pennsylvania, has handed out free groceries since 2004. This year it planted six beds and a few fruit trees out front, and the harvest is going straight to families who rarely see fresh produce.

A Nottingham Trent University project called SmartBerry put sensors and AI in strawberry greenhouses in Nigeria so growers could water when plants needed it instead of on a fixed schedule. The university reports a 40% jump in yield, 15% less post-harvest waste and more market-grade fruit.

St. Vincent de Paul’s Mesa Urban Farm, on Broadway Road just south of downtown Mesa, grows about 500 pounds of fresh produce a month for the dining room next door, including bananas, bitter melon and moringa. Volunteers can sign up for morning shifts on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from 7 to 10 a.m.

Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy is steering residents to two tools: About My Water, a map app that shows a community’s water provider, sources and groundwater conditions, and Kyl Bot, an AI chatbot trained on the center’s own research that ends each answer by pointing readers to the reports behind it.

Maricopa County Parks and Recreation’s Desert Defenders program will scatter clay-and-compost seed pellets made from locally harvested native seeds at Usery Mountain Regional Park in Mesa on Sunday, Nov. 8, from 8 to 10:30 a.m. Registration is required, and families with children 5 and older are encouraged to come.

Researchers at Georgia Tech built CultivAgents, a gardening assistant that routes each question through separate AI “agents” for skill level, local conditions and plant culture. Community gardeners who tried it felt more confident, but experts also caught it recommending plants that were wrong for the place. Both findings carry lessons for anyone asking a chatbot about a desert garden.

At Mesa Public Library’s Gateway branch in Eastmark, a computer-controlled FarmBot plants, waters and tracks a garden bed outside the THINKspot makerspace. The library’s free FarmBot Fall Seeding Open House runs Saturday, Nov. 14, from 10 a.m. to noon, and a beginner talk on Sonoran Desert gardening follows Nov. 16.