AI Revolutionizing Agriculture: Syngenta and Heritable Team Up to Boost Global Food Security and Grower Success
In the contemporary technological landscape, Artificial Intelligence (AI) stands out as a leading innovator, significantly impacting various sectors including agriculture. By leveraging generative AI, farmers are able to optimize operations and enhance productivity levels. One such sector that has witnessed tangible results from AI implementation is vegetable seed production, where companies utilize AI technology in conjunction with traditional methods to identify optimal vegetable varieties out of thousands of options.
This advanced approach caters to growers operating within diverse markets who face disparate environmental conditions. To find the ideal vegetable seeds, farmers look beyond yield and seek varieties that cater to unique local climates and growth conditions. The conventional method for variety selection involves a series of manual processes, including seed variety testing, field trials, data collection, and feedback from growers.
Modern seed companies are now integrating AI technology into their selection methods, allowing them to analyze vast amounts of information more efficiently than ever before. This integration streamlines the process between seed selection and the first crop, saving valuable time and resources for both parties involved.
Syngenta Vegetable Seeds and Heritable Agriculture represent pioneers in adopting AI technology within the agricultural sector. Heritable, a startup spun off from Alphabet’s innovation lab, specializes in developing AI tools to analyze agricultural data. By collaborating with Syngenta, these companies have created software systems that can recommend optimal vegetable seed varieties for specific growers and locations.
By utilizing AI tools alongside Syngenta’s extensive product portfolio, Heritable is able to predict the top-performing commercial seed varieties for various regions based on crop trials and data on localized geographical conditions. The aim is to forecast how well these seeds will perform for global growers, with a focus on accuracy down to approximately 10 square meters.
Matthew Johnston, Global Head of Vegetable Seeds and Flowers at Syngenta, emphasizes the potential benefits of AI in agriculture: “Choosing the right seed is crucial to a grower’s success. New technologies like AI can help us bring innovative solutions directly to the field or greenhouse.”
Syngenta has already implemented AI within its business operations, notably in areas such as bio-stimulant and fertilizer development. Recently, the company introduced an AI chatbot named ‘Cropwise AI’ to its Cropwise digital platform, designed to help growers make informed decisions about crop choices by analyzing data.
Ultimately, the objective is to bolster food security worldwide, ensuring that farmers globally can produce affordable, resilient, and reliable food in the face of increasingly unpredictable climate conditions.
