Bringing together agricultural science and artificial intelligence to build smarter, more resilient agrifood systems.

As climate shocks become more frequent and farming decisions increasingly complex, access to timely, reliable and locally relevant agricultural knowledge has never been more important. Imagine if decades of agricultural research, climate intelligence and field experience could be accessed instantly to help farmers, researchers, extension systems and policymakers make better decisions.

Next-gen AI solutions for agriculture

To help turn that vision into reality, ICRISAT and ​ Soket AI Labs signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to jointly develop next-generation AI solutions that can strengthen agricultural research, climate resilience and decision-making across the Global South.

This collaboration brings together ICRISAT’s globally recognised expertise in agricultural science, climate adaptation and digital innovation with Soket AI’s advanced capabilities in artificial intelligence and foundational model development.

“Artificial intelligence has the potential to reshape how agricultural knowledge is created, accessed and applied,” said Dr Himanshu Pathak, Director General of ICRISAT.

“To deliver impact, AI systems must be grounded in science, trusted data and local realities. Agriculture demands more than generic AI; it requires systems that can reason with context and support better decisions. Together, we aim to develop AI solutions that address the complex challenges facing agriculture across the Global South,” said Dr Pathak.

Soket AI is an emerging Indian AI company supported under the Government of India’s IndiaAI Mission, to develop large-scale AI models optimized for reasoning, multilingual intelligence and applications relevant to the Global South.

The ICRISAT-SoketAI collaboration will focus on developing reasoning-driven AI systems that support more informed decision-making across crop production, climate risk management, natural resource management, and agrifood systems development.

Areas of collaboration will include:

Building large-scale agricultural knowledge corpora

Developing reasoning-driven AI systems for agriculture

Strengthening AI-powered advisory and decision-support tools

Exploring domain-specific foundation models for agriculture

Advancing multilingual AI solutions that improve accessibility for farmers and agricultural stakeholders

“Together with ICRISAT, we look forward to developing next-generation AI solutions that can create meaningful impact for agriculture and farming communities at scale,” said Abhishek Upperwal, Founder and CEO of Soket AI.

As agriculture enters the era of artificial intelligence, ICRISAT is advancing efforts to harness AI for accelerating scientific discovery and delivering actionable insights to farmers. This partnership brings together complementary expertise to develop next-generation agricultural intelligence systems, including domain-specific reasoning models, high-quality datasets, and structured knowledge frameworks.

Led by Dr Shalander Kumar, Principal Scientist, and Dr G Kishore Kumar, Associate Scientist, the initiative will help build robust AI solutions that support research, innovation, and evidence-based decision-making across agri-food systems. Contributing to CGIAR’s digital transformation agenda, this collaboration will combine frontier AI capabilities with agricultural science to develop evidence-based solutions for researchers, extension systems, policymakers and farmers across the Global South.