Syngenta's AI Revolution in Agriculture: Insights from Bruno Muller

In an exclusive interview, Bruno Muller, Head of Digital Agriculture at Syngenta, sheds light on the transformative role of artificial intelligence in addressing the challenges faced by Brazil's agricultural sector. As one of the world's largest food suppliers, Brazil is at the forefront of adopting innovative technologies to enhance farm productivity and sustainability. Muller discusses Syngenta's cutting-edge AI solutions, including Nema Digital and Cropwise Imagery, which are revolutionizing pest management and crop monitoring. He also offers valuable insights into the future of AI in agriculture and its potential to shape the industry over the next decade.

Bruno Muller

Head of Digital Agriculture at Syngenta

What are the specific challenges that the Brazilian agricultural sector currently faces and how can AI help solve them?

Regardless of the size of the crop, one of the biggest challenges for farmers today is ensuring profitability, guaranteeing new investments and security for the evolution of crops. Faced with this, farmers still have to deal with various problems that can impact the harvest result, such as climate and price fluctuations, increased pest pressure, availability of rural credit, and also the shortage of qualified labor.

Although these challenges are extremely complex, the positive side is that each year, new technologies are being developed to minimize the impacts of these numerous variables, which has allowed Brazil to become one of the world's largest food suppliers. One of the main examples of how technology has improved farm routines is the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the field, which offers a range of possibilities, from crop monitoring to more precise decision-making. Combining advanced algorithms, machine control, and data analysis, AI can collect real-time information and provide valuable insights to farmers, driving the adoption of more efficient and sustainable agricultural practices. In addition to monitoring and detecting weeds, pests, and diseases, AI can contribute to the optimization of irrigation and nutrition, and the automation of agricultural machines and robots. Artificial intelligence is a reality in the sector and is already revolutionizing agriculture and providing an increasingly technological future in the field, which together with good agricultural practices, will help us enable global food security and an even more sustainable and efficient agribusiness.

Syngenta claims that Nema Digital is the world's first commercial digital solution for diagnosing nematode infestations. How long did it take to develop the AI for this application and what were the main challenges?

The Syngenta Group invests about US$ 1.4 billion per year in the development of innovative solutions for agriculture. Currently, the company's digital agriculture tools monitor about 100 million hectares worldwide.

This achievement reflects the company's commitment to supporting farmers and developing products to meet their needs.

Speaking specifically of Cropwise, the platform is present in 20 countries. In Brazil, it monitors about 7 million hectares and had a growth of more than 15% in number of customers compared to the previous harvest.

The process of developing tools like Nema Digital involves an average of four years between research, development, and implementation.

How does Nema Digital work?

Nema Digital is a solution that uses satellite images, artificial intelligence, and computational modeling to track, through a database with the history of the last harvests, areas where nematode infestations may occur. Based on this algorithm, ideal points for soil collection are identified to identify the present genera and define the best form of control in the affected areas.

The tool also helps the producer to quantify the area of damage caused by nematodes. It is estimated that an entire harvest is lost every ten years due to nematodes. It is a silent and significant impact, hence the importance of investing in correct management and technologies that help you quickly identify the problem, ensuring the health and productivity of crops.

What are the differences between the AI of Cropwise Imagery and Nema Digital?

We have artificial intelligence within several Cropwise solutions. The AI of Nema Digital, as explained earlier, evaluates the soybean crop so that the producer can identify points and the size of the problem with nematodes.

The AI of Cropwise Imagery has an intelligent model that brings an idea similar to that of Nema; however, it's broader and continuous, as it allows a total scan looking for points of attention for possible anomalies in crop development.

The intelligence does a historical analysis, of up to five harvests, of the behavior of the areas to identify the exact location of anomalies in the plots. The tool shows the points of attention so that producers are alerted in advance and take corrective measures earlier, minimizing economic losses. This is crucial for farmers, as it helps to quickly identify problems in the field, such as pests, diseases, and irrigation failures. It's a technology that we are testing with several clients in Brazil, but it has already shown precision and works for the producer throughout the entire harvest, sending alerts for quick decision-making.

In addition to these, we are developing another solution, Cropwise AI, which is based on ″conversational artificial intelligence″, a special type of intelligence capable of understanding and responding to text conversations, allowing the software to answer specific questions from users. What Syngenta is proposing with the solution is that the producer can solve agronomic doubts about their farm very quickly, since this tool is being shaped using cutting-edge agronomic intelligence, considering all of Syngenta's experience and the client's history.

How is AI used in the Cropwise Protector tool to help make quick management decisions and monitor crops from end to end?

In Cropwise Protector, we also have some features that use artificial intelligence and have been causing a revolution in our clients. An example is the automatic counting of moths. The traditional method of monitoring this pest, which brings numerous losses to sugarcane fields, involves the use of traps to attract males and facilitate insect counting. Counting these insects is a manual and tedious job, subject to error, because in large farms, the traps exceed dozens and some reach forty to sixty insects.

In this technology, we adopt computer vision techniques, AI, and machine learning to help our clients in this task. Today, when taking a photo of the trap by cell phone, our technology does this automatic counting for them in about 2 seconds, saving the field team's time by up to 3 times.

Looking to the future, which emerging AI technologies or applications will have the greatest impact on Brazilian agriculture in the next 5-10 years?

Artificial intelligence in the agricultural market will grow a lot in the coming years and will gain a fundamental role among the technologies present in various aspects of the sector. But probably the solutions that will have the greatest impact will be those that provide enhanced decision-making through data-based insights, optimized resource management leading to higher yields combined with sustainability, especially with regard to more efficient control of pests, weeds, and diseases.

Implementing AI effectively in agricultural production requires the application of user-friendly and accessible tools that are economically viable for large, medium, and small producers. In this way, the agricultural sector will be able to make significant advances in production efficiency and sustainability.

This story was initially published in the 2024 Latin America Focus. Download the magazine to read more stories.

Please contact Christina Xie at christina@agropages.com if you would like to share your company story, contribute articles or advertising with AgroPages.