CABI has published its first artificial-intelligence-ready datasets on Hugging Face, the platform for sharing machine-learning models, datasets and AI resources. Developed under the Generative AI for Agriculture (GAIA) project, supported by the Gates Foundation and UK International Development, they are meant to make CABI's agricultural knowledge more accessible to developers building AI tools; GAIA aims to improve content sourcing, sharing and governance across generative-AI systems so that digital advisory tools become safer, more relevant and more equitable.

'There is growing demand for AI tools that provide practical, locally relevant agricultural advice,' said Katherine Cameron, CABI's global lead for digital advisory services. 'By making agricultural knowledge available in AI-ready formats, we can help improve the accuracy of digital advisory tools and support better decision making across the agricultural sector.'

The first dataset, CABI Plant Health Knowledge for AI, brings together locally co-developed resources on crop pests and diseases in Kenya, Ethiopia and India — PlantwisePlus factsheets for farmers, pest-management decision guides and plant-health case studies — for developers creating tools for smallholder farming systems.

CABI Palm Weevil Knowledge for AI gathers books, journal articles, CABI Compendium datasheets, farmer factsheets and country-specific information, including registered bioprotection products where available, on palm weevils and above all the red palm weevil, which the Consortium for Red Palm Weevil Control estimates causes about US$2 billion in crop losses a year and affects the livelihoods of some 50 million farmers. The pest is a priority of the Gates-funded AgriLLM initiative, which is building AI tools for agriculture.

Dr Jawoo Koo of the International Food Policy Research Institute, GAIA's project lead, called the palm-weevil dataset 'a valuable resource for strengthening tools such as AI advisory services'. CABI plans further datasets in the coming months, including a livestock collection covering poultry and cattle later this year, and will keep expanding the plant-health collection with bioprotection product information.

Source: CABI