Google to launch Agricultural Landscape Understanding (ALU) Research API soon in India

Search engine giant Google on Wednesday (July 17) hosted the second edition of Google I/O Connect developers conclave in Bengaluru. 

Besides announcing partnership with Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to offer Artificial Intelligence training to 10,000 startups, Google announced to bring Agricultural Landscape Understanding (ALU) Research API (Android Programming Interface) to India.

Due to Global Warming-induced erratic-weather conditions worldwide, it has become very challenging for governments to increase food production to meet the needs of growing global population.

Technology can play a crucial role in understanding the soil quality and weather to help farmers grow crops on time and get good yield.

Here’s where Google’s Agricultural Landscape Understanding (ALU) Research API tool comes into play. It is designed to make agricultural practices more data-driven and efficient.

Google's new Agriculture Landscape Understanding API will be introduced in India soon.

Google is collaborating with Indian startups to help farming sector not just in India, globally as well. 

Bengaluru-based Cropin Technology,  which offers AI Platform for Food and Agriculture sector, today announced the launch of its new service Sage. 

Google Gemini-powered Sage is touted to be the world’s first real-time agri-intelligence solution.  Cropin Sage has converted the world’s agricultural landscape (16 million+ acres so far) into a proprietary grid-based map with options of 3x3 meters, 10x10 meters, or 5x5 kilometers. 

Krishna Kumar, Founder and CEO of Cropin at Google I/O Connect 2024 event in Bengaluru on July 17, 2024.

It can deliver data and intelligence at almost any scale,  with accuracy and speed. This enables Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies, seed manufacturers, food processors, multilateral organisations, financial institutions and governments to make informed decisions based on historical, present, and future data on cultivation practices, crop, irrigation, climate, and soil. Sage enables the Cropin Cloud platform to help agri-food businesses future-proof their production and supply chains.

Cropin uses state-of-the-art technologies such as Generative AI, Machine Learning (ML), multi-layered global climate data, a global crop knowledge graph, earth observation data and advanced crop models to significantly increase the crop production in eco-friendly sustainable way. 

With AL and ML, Cropin Sage can even forecast future yields. 

“At launch, Cropin’s enterprise customers can deploy Sage across geographic locations, providing intelligence on 13 key crops, including wheat, rice, potato, and maize, which collectively cover almost 80 per cent of the world's food demand. Cropin plans to build and deploy Sage globally in a phased approach, aligned with enterprise customer requirements and demand,” the company said.

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