new crop five-time
'We are creating new crops five-times faster'
In the city of Arusha in Tanzania, David Guerena, agricultural scientist at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, is leading a project called Artemis. Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, this is using AI to help breed more resilient crops. Specifically the AI is helping speed up work called phenotyping. This is the visual studying of new crop varieties based on observations of their characteristics, such as how many flowers, pods or leaves that a plant has. "Traditionally it takes around 10 years to develop a new crop variety," explains Mr Guerena.