3rd annual convention - TRUST:Humans, Machines & Ecosystems

16-18 October 2019. Hyderabad, India. TRUST: Humans, Machines & Ecosystems. This year’s Convention was hosted by The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). The Platform is led by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). 

Building resilient global food security requires us to navigate a complex net of interactions between the biosphere, economy, technology, and society. Machines and machine-to-machine systems shape and accelerate our social and economic lives, even as climates and ecosystems are threatened. Our ethical frameworks, human communities, and institutions struggle to stay abreast the rate of change. Therefore, we can no longer consider distinct facets of food security in isolation; we need holistic solutions.

There are growing insights about how humanity can live within the natural, biological, and climatic boundaries of the planet. These new models offer great potential for managing ethics, multi-stakeholder coordination, and action as data and digital technologies demonstrate the agility, precision and insights needed to effectively manage this complexity.

To claim these potential solutions for the future of food security we need trust. Trust in institutions, in firms, in dynamic and expanding human communities, and in the technologies themselves that can help us build the future.

The inaugural 2017 convention, was about forming the right partnerships and alliances and in 2018 it focused on the data mobilization and interoperability needed to build an effective data ecosystem. The closing the event announced the winners of the 2019 Inspire Challenge in a special awards ceremony.

Extract of the programme:

Breakout session 4. Drones for Agriculture

CGIAR Geospatial Community of Practice (CGIAR-CSI) organised the "Drones for Agriculture" knowledge-sharing event. Remote participation was possible via Bluejeans: https://bluejeans.com/743045028?src=join_info

Overview: Drone Applications in Agriculture

• Chandrashekhar Biradar (ICARDA)

Partner Showcase I: Drones and Sensors

• UAV Sensors for Plant Phenomics (Rabi Narayan Sahoo, Indian Agricultural Research Institute)
• UAVs for Agriculture (Indrababu Gadde, IPAGE)
• Autonomous Drones for Agriculture (Prem Kumar Vislawath, Marut Drones)
• UAV Phenotyping Solution (Alexis Comar, HIPHEN)
• Weed Detection and Image Annotation Tools (Vinod Kumar, Senseacre Labs)
• UAV for Agricultural Insurance (Sudhakar Manda, Skymet Weather Services)
• ImageBreed: Streamlining remote sensing data management to facilitate breeding decisions (Nicholas Santanonio, Cornell University)

Sharing Use Cases in Agriculture

• Pheno-i use cases (Michael Selvaraj, CIAT)
• Drones for agricultural research and development (Kai Sonder, CIMMYT)
• Drones for Rice Research (Suranjana Borah, IRRI)
• High-Throughput Phenotyping using UAV with multiple onboard sensors (Prof. Rajalakshmi P, IIT Hyderabad)
• Drone for irrigation and flood management (David Wiberg, IWMI)
   

A suitable Niche for Cultivating Cactus

"Finding a Suitable Niche for Cultivating Cactus Pear (Opuntia ficus-indica) as an Integrated Crop in Resilient Dryland
Agroecosystems of India" by Prasenjit Acharya, Chandrashekhar Biradar, Mounir Louhaichi, Surajit Ghosh, Sawsan Hassan, Hloniphani Moyo, Ashutosh Sarker has been published in Sustainability as part of the Special Issue
Suitable Agronomic Techniques for Sustainable Agriculture. It available online:

• Abstract: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/21/5897
• HTML Version: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/21/5897/htm
• PDF Version: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/21/5897/pdf
• Special Issue:
• https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/special_issues/Suitable_Agronomic_Techniques

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