IRRI will receive a USD 2 million grant from Google’s philanthropic arm, Google.org, to harness the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in fast-tracking the development and deployment of resilient, high-yielding varieties to sustain and increase rice production in the face of climate change.
Through the grant, IRRI’s Fit-for-Future Genetic Resources Unit which stewards the International Rice Genebank (IRG) aims to apply AI and high-throughput phenotyping methodologies to assess the IRG rice collection’s tolerance to environmental stresses such as flooding, drought, and salinity—a laborious, costly, and time-consuming process—more efficient.
This will also promote the enhanced utilization of the genebank’s resources.
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We are confronted with 3 challenges – Covid, Climate change and Conflict. I am sure this laudable initiative by Google will mitigate hunger and malnutrition in the most deprived populations.
In other words google spends 2 million USD to get breeding data from IRRI