China has launched the first competition for growing greenhouse strawberries between traditional and innovative farmers
Agriculture can benefit from the introduction of artificial intelligence to replace cheap manual labor, especially in countries where the number of agricultural workers is declining and farmers are aging.
In the first smart agriculture competition organized by Pinduoduo, China’s largest e-Commerce agribusiness platform, teams of data scientists will apply AI algorithms to remotely grow strawberries in automated greenhouses. They challenged traditional farmers to see who would get the most economic benefit from the plots allocated to them in a classic man-versus-machine contest.
The competition will last until November. Technology teams will remotely grow strawberries in digital and automated greenhouses, and formulate and optimize AI solutions based on growth and greenhouse conditions data obtained from IOT devices, cameras, and sensors.
On the other hand, traditional teams will rely on their collective experience in agronomy and strawberry growing skills.
The competition is organized by the Pinduoduo platform in cooperation with the Chinese agricultural University under the technical leadership of the Food and agriculture organization of the United Nations.
The e-Commerce platform makes it a strategic priority to digitize agriculture for the benefit of both farmers and consumers.
The competition attracted the interest of almost 40 teams from all over the world, including leading agricultural universities in the Netherlands and China. The winner will be selected based on the practical economic benefits that it brings and the technical advantages of cultivation methods.
“Through this Smart agriculture competition, we hope to demonstrate the potential economic benefits achieved by integrating cutting – edge information technology with best practices in traditional agriculture,” said David Liu, Vice President of strategy at Pinduoduo. – This is the beginning of long-term research and collaboration. We hope to spread information about the results of this competition and bring real economic benefits to agricultural producers.”
Source: www.hortidaily.com
