Golden Harvest is empowering growers to make informed decisions about planting hybrid corn and soybean seeds, while educating them on how best to treat plant diseases like tar spot through its GHX Mobile app, which was featured at the seed brand’s booth at the Farm Progress Show in Decatur, Ill., from Aug. 26-28.
In 2022, the seed brand — which was acquired by Syngenta in 2004 — launched the Golden Harvest Xperience (GHX) Mobile app, providing growers with a way to buy seeds from Golden Harvest and its distribution network, Justin Welch, head of agronomy for NA seed at Syngenta, told AgTechNavigator.
The app was built for growers, agronomists, and dealers in mind, but the app is primarily used by the latter two to help farmers who might be too busy tending fields or planning next year’s operations, Welch explained.
Last year at World Agri-Tech London, Syngenta revealed Cropwise AI – a generative AI system where farmers and agronomists can ask the app for advice on treating crop diseases like tar spot ─ a fungus infection that produces raised black spots on corn crops. Tar Spot is “like lighting a match in kindling,” as the infection can spread quickly, Welch noted.
Based on a large-language model (LLM), Cropwise AI was integrated into GHX Mobile, so users can pull up information about tar spot in real-time, allowing farmers to quickly respond to the disease, he added.
“I could ask [GHX Mobile] questions like, ‘What hybrid should I plant in Decatur, Illinoid, and what population should it be? And is it good against tar spot?’ I can now do all of those things through AI, and it is a true large- language model. It is not predictive analytics,” Welch said.
He added, “Inside of the app, you get a daily push notification on tar spot in your area for each one of your fields, and so we are able to provide [users] with that risk assessment in real-time, so they can still make fungicide applications if it is required, but maybe if it is not required. And this year, ... we saw that there was risk coming in on tar spot, and then it dissipated, but we did not need the application because we saw it in real-time.”
Creating an AI platform for the future
Looking ahead, Syngenta is working on new capabilities for GHX Mobile, leveraging the vast amount of data it gathers from its various products, Welch noted.
Cropwise “is a boutique LLM that was grown in-house specifically about us, and no one else has the data. So, in the new world of AI, who owns the sourcing of the library is going to be the winner. These are all things that are unique to us, that we have in our own LLM, [and] that is not outside of that ecosystem,” Welch elaborated.
He added, “If you want to know things about us, you have to come here to find it. And we also have other proprietary information there, too. But the nice thing is that we are going to be leading that space when it comes to AI and agriculture.”
