UC Riverside’s Amir Verdi has received a national award for developing innovative online tools to help crop growers make better decisions around water use and for his extensive outreach around using these tools.
Amir Verdi
Verdi, an associate professor of agricultural and urban water management in the Department of Environmental Sciences, received the 2026 Educational Aids Blue Ribbon Award from the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, or ASABE. The annual award recognizes educational and outreach materials that improve public understanding of agricultural and biological engineering beyond the traditional classroom.
“I am truly honored to receive the ASABE Blue Ribbon Award,” Verdi said. “This recognition is especially meaningful because it comes from my peers in agricultural and biological engineering, a community that values practical, science-based solutions to real-world problems.”
The honor recognizes both the online tools Verdi developed as well as the outreach to help people get comfortable using them. Verdi and his team introduce the tools through workshops, seminars, field demonstrations, publications, and social media, giving growers, irrigation advisors, Cooperative Extension personnel, students, and water managers opportunities to learn how to apply them in real-world settings.
His collection of web-based tools helps users determine when and how much to irrigate, estimate crop water needs, understand soil conditions, and account for differences across agricultural fields.
While the applications rely on advanced technologies including artificial intelligence, which identifies patterns in large amounts of information, as well as remote sensing, which gathers data about crops, soil, and water from satellites, drones and aircraft, the goal is to make sophisticated science easy to use.
“Our goal has been to develop tools that are scientifically and technically strong, but also accessible to the growers, landscape professionals, students, researchers, and water managers who need them,” Verdi said.
The tools were created with Southern California agriculture in mind, where drought-limited water supplies and wide variations in soil, weather, and growing conditions make efficient irrigation especially important. By bringing those factors together in accessible online applications, Verdi and his team help users conserve water while maintaining healthy crops.
Verdi plans to continue developing technologies that improve water use in both agricultural and urban environments. His current projects include research on the safe use of recycled water for food production, water quality, salinity, and irrigation and nitrogen management for cantaloupe growers. He expects that work to lead to new online resources and improvements to the existing tools.
Verdi has been at UC Riverside for about a decade. Before joining UCR, he served as an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He earned his doctorate in biosystems engineering from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
His interest in the field grew from the importance of water to food production and quality of life, particularly in places where supplies are scarce. As with the work that won him this award, much of his work has focused on converting complex calculations involving soil, plants, weather, and irrigation systems into information people can readily use.
“The broader goal remains the same,” Verdi said, “to make advanced water-management science more practical, accessible, and useful for the people making decisions in the field and in urban landscapes.”