Since the dawn of farming some 10,000 years ago, the health of agriculture has been inextricably linked to the health of the planet. Now the climate crisis is disrupting farming across the globe.
Yet as increasingly unpredictable weather patterns and temperature changes threaten crops, one startup is hopeful that artificial intelligence (AI) can help farmers adapt to a fast-changing environment.
Avalo, a crop development company based in North Carolina, is using machine learning models to accelerate the creation of new and resilient crop varieties.
The traditional way to select for favorable traits in crops is to identify individual plants that exhibit the trait – such as drought resistance - and use those plants to pollinate others, before planting those seeds in fields to see how they perform. But that process requires growing a plant through its entire life cycle to see the result, which can take many years.
Read more at CNN