Crop Selection and Screening Moving to AI

Artificial Intelligence is leading the charge when it comes to innovation in the agriculture industry. The University of Illinois recently hosted an ag tech week gathering experts to discuss the future of the industry. Of those was Brian Lutz, Vice President of agricultural solutions at Corteva Agri Science, he talks about how artificial intelligence is reshaping the pipeline.

“Yeah, I mean in really simple terms. If we look back over the last century of innovation in agriculture, we've had these big dominant waves, right? So the advent of hybridization and breeding, and then proliferation of fertilizers, and then all of the innovation and crop protection products, and GMOs and traits. But all of these happened as waves of different innovation that would last maybe a couple of decades, where they were the dominant waves. When we think about what AI and data are allowing us to do, we're really able to accelerate the pace of innovation where we have multiple things like what have shaped the last century all happening now almost simultaneously, and that's just, you know, a great amount of additional technology that we're able to release for farmers around the world..”

Lutz says that hybrid wheat, reduced-stature corn, and stacking traits are just a few examples of things to come. He said, at the core of innovation and farming is a move from selection and screening to AI and data being more predictive and prescriptive.