Digital Agriculture
Digital agriculture can revolutionize agriculture as we know it. By harnessing technological advances and generating vast datasets on the variables of productive farming from one country to another, digital agriculture allows agricultural researchers to develop tools that improve on-farm management and accelerate crop breeding to develop varieties for enhanced nutrition, climate change mitigation and adaptation and value addition, thus benefitting producers, consumers and farming ecosystems.
What is digital agriculture?
Digital agriculture is farming with the support of tools that optimize practices for improved efficiency and sustainability. One important area of digital agriculture is ‘precision agriculture’, which is the use of technology such as GPS tracking, drones and image detection on farms to improve production and planning by modelling climate scenarios, estimating yields, evaluating soil health to calculate input needs, and identifying pests and diseases for farmers’ early response, all of which allow farmers to increase productivity. While precision agriculture focuses on the first stages of production (on farm), digital agriculture extends to using technology across entire product value chains: in preparation for farming, optimizing production, planning post-production activities, offering extension services, facilitating product traceability, and more.
The team working on digital agriculture
History of research at the Alliance
The Alliance has been working on digital agriculture for over a decade, driven by the need to find new methods to accelerate progress towards global food security by increasing productivity and nutrition for a growing population, while mitigating and adapting to climate change. We combine expertise in genetics, agronomy and data science, using technological advances for genetic mapping of desirable traits, phenotypic data collection and analysis, and the development of genomic prediction models.
The team working on digital agriculture began by using phenotowers (cameras placed on high towers) to collect and analyze crop data. As technology progressed, we incorporated drones for high-resolution aerial images, and satellites for broad agricultural insights. More recently, we began exploring the potential of artificial intelligence to predict crop traits, improve yields, and detect diseases. We are now developing mobile apps to deliver real-time data and guidance directly to farmers, enhancing their ability to make informed decisions. These include Tumaini for banana disease detection using imaging technology.
Our research approach
The Alliance's work on digital agriculture aims to deliver tangible benefits to both farmers and consumers. One of the digital agriculture team’s key area of research is the development of new crop varieties that cater to the needs of consumers (e.g. biofortified crops with higher nutritional value, shorter cooking time, etc.) and that enhance farmers' resilience livelihoods (e.g. by yielding higher quantities, being more resilient to pests, diseases and climate variability, and requiring less costly inputs), thus contributing to sustainable food security.
Flagship Projects
From imaging technology for coffee farmers to estimate yield sand prepare for market, to disease detection apps that aim to slow the spread of Fusarium disease in banana plantations globally, our tools and projects leverage many forms of digital agriculture. Explore our key innovations.
Selected stories
Where we work
Our digital agriculture tools are currently being deployed the these countries.
Partnerships and outreach
Our work on digital agriculture is carried out in strong partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and is now expanding to become part of the Bezos Earth Fund’s project for carbon sequestration.
Multimedia
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