Lurking beneath the soil is something unseen by the naked eye, something so small you need a microscope just to catch a glimpse: nematodes. The tiny organisms are ubiquitous in Earth’s ecosystems and found on the tallest mountains to the darkest corners of the oceans. Often called roundworms, nematodes vastly outnumber other organisms on Earth. Some species of nematodes, however, can cause problems when present in excessive numbers. Researchers in the Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life Sciences are studying how to use artificial intelligence to identify the presence of plant-parasitic soybean nematodes that cause upward of $1 billion worth of soybean loss each year in the United States. As part of the research, a robust microscopic data set of soybean nematodes will be developed as well as artificial intelligence algorithms for identification and geographic information system infestation heatmaps. The result of the research is packaging all of this into an executable tool for growers.