Punjab plans to use AI to boost agriculture

Chandigarh, Jan 1 (PTI) The Punjab government plans to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) in agriculture to improve farm productivity, sustainability and farmers' income, with support from the Centre of Excellence at IIT Ropar, officials said on Thursday.

Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister Gurmeet Singh Khudian chaired a meeting at Punjab Bhawan here to review progress and prepare a roadmap for field-level use of AI-based solutions.

Khudian said new technologies must give clear benefits to farmers.

He assured government support for pilot projects and for expanding successful AI initiatives across the state.

He also directed officials to install automatic weather stations, involve farmers in data collection, support horticulture clusters and expand AI-based livestock productivity solutions.

The minister welcomed IIT Ropar's plan to start national-level courses on precision agriculture and AI in agriculture to train youth and government officers.

He said reserving seats for students and officers from Punjab would strengthen the state's agri-technology capacity.

The collaboration is expected to help make Punjab a leading state in AI-driven agricultural development, improving resource efficiency, climate resilience and sustainable growth.

Pushpendra P Singh of IIT Ropar informed that the Centre of Excellence, with a financial outlay of about Rs 310 crore supported by the Centre, is working on AI-based crop advisory systems, multilingual farmer chatbots, yield estimation models, soil health analysis, weather tools and smart livestock management. PTI VSD BAL BAL