Google has announced a set of new partnerships and initiatives in India spanning crop science, agriculture, education and economic inclusion. In a blog post, Preeti Lobana, VP and country manager for India, and Lila Ibrahim, Chief AI readiness officer at Google DeepMind, said AI is most impactful when built in partnership with the people who need it most. They called India “the epicenter of applied innovation.”
Sorghum genetic atlas for food security
Google DeepMind and Google.org, through the AI Collaborative for Food Security, are working with the Hyderabad-based International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology and the University of Washington’s Department of Genome Sciences.The collaboration will build an open-access genetic atlas of sorghum, also known as jowar, as a global public good. It will draw on a representative sample from ICRISAT’s genebank, which holds over 44,000 distinct seeds from more than 90 countries. The project pairs genetic analysis with machine learning to identify the most promising plant combinations. Google says this can help breeders develop more resilient and productive varieties faster than traditional methods, which can involve decade-long trial and error.Google DeepMind will also fund a three-year postdoctoral fellowship at ICRISAT. It is the company’s first such fellowship in India and its first outside the UK. The fellow will build tools to characterize the genomes of other crops, such as chickpea, groundnut and pigeon peas.
Agri models opened to developers
Google is expanding access to its Agricultural Understanding models, developed by its AnthroKrishi team, by making them available in public preview through an API. The models now provide insights for 11 countries.The company said Amnex has integrated them into the Gujarat government’s Krushi Pragati crop intelligence platform. In the last year it has supported over 900 million SMS-based advisories for more than 600,000 farmers, covering over 14 million hectares. OpenAgriNet, a coalition led by the EkStep Foundation, is also using the APIs and exploring a broader agricultural application.
Training teachers
Google launched its AI Educator Series in India in May with five state and regional partners. It has trained over 80,000 educators since then. The program is now expanding to Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Sikkim and the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship.Google is also launching a free, self-paced online version, aligned with NEP 2020. It is available in English now. Hindi, Marathi, Telugu, Assamese, Odia and Punjabi versions are due later this month.In addition, Google is supporting educators across 100 Atal Tinkering Labs through ATL Saathi, a Gemini-powered desktop application for STEM curricula. It is also working with IIT Bombay and the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser on educational AI research.
$15 million for small businesses
Google.org is giving $15 million to The/Nudge to help India’s more than 90 million micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). These businesses employ over 345 million people. The money will fund AI tools to widen small firms’ access to formal credit, market discovery and compliance. It includes an open call for proposals and a multilingual, voice-led platform to train local talent in Tier 3 and 4 towns.