Next-generation Agriculture: Future-proofing Food Systems with AI and Biotechnology

What does the future of farming look like with artificial intelligence (AI)?

With the current world population at 8 billion, our farmers face the immense challenge of producing 70% more food to feed 10 billion people by 2050. This challenge echoes one of the key themes of the World Economic Forum’s 2026 Annual Meeting: How can we build prosperity within planetary boundaries?

Achieving this goal requires cutting-edge technologies without compromising sustainability. These disruptive technologies are referred to as “green swans” because they exponentially drive solutions and advancements in economic, social, and environmental wealth creation. Biotechnology is considered one of today’s green swans because of its documented capacity to deliver exponential solutions to potential crises. Aside from biotechnology, AI could also be one of agriculture’s green swans due to its potential impact and benefits. 

This article highlights recent breakthroughs in biotechnology that utilize the transformative power of AI to drive sustainability.

AI-assisted crop design and predictive breeding

Aberystwyth University researchers developed AI-powered tools to automate the measurement of plant seeds and pods to develop improved crop varieties. The tool called MorphPod can accurately measure critical crop yield indicators such as pod length, width, and volume. With these measurements, the AI tool pinpoints genetic regions that control growth and development. Thus, with MorphPod, crops are bred more efficiently, yielding higher yields, better shape, and greater resilience with less effort. The MorphPod tool has been successfully tested on oilseed rape, cabbage, oats, barley, and wheat and is available online for researchers worldwide.

Integrating AI with gene editing

Since its discovery, gene editing has fast-tracked the breeding and commercial release of improved crops. Experts are now advancing gene-editing tools using AI, and the results are impressive. For instance, New Phytologist reported Plant OpenCRISPR-1 (POC1) developed by researchers from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. POC1 is an AI-designed genome editing nuclease tailored for crop improvement and commercial applications.

Resurrect Bio stands true to its commitment to “resurrect” plants’ ability to fight disease with the use of its proprietary AI platform called FloraFold. This platform aims to reactivate immune functions suppressed by pathogens or lost through decades of intensive breeding for yield. FloraFold has the ability to predict the precise, minimal genetic improvements necessary to break the chemical grip that pathogens use to disarm a plant's defense system. 

Reducing off-targets in molecular scissors called Zinc Finger Nucleases (ZFNs) is now achievable with ZFDesign. It has been developed as a more precise gene editor, and the current model has been modified to express all the ZFNs in the array continuously, thereby reducing the modularity of the design.

Nature reported CRISPR-GPT, an AI system designed to automate and enhance CRISPR-based gene editing experiments. Developed by experts from Stanford University, Princeton University, the University of California, Berkeley, and Google DeepMind, CRISPR-GPT leverages the reasoning capabilities of large language models, combined with domain expertise, retrieval techniques, and external tools. The platform also integrates safety features to prevent misuse of CRISPR-GPT.

The Robot Revolution is now underway in agricultural innovation, with Genome Editing and Artificial-Intelligence-based Robots (GEAIR) introduced by experts from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. GEAIR is designed to genetically engineer crops for robot compatibility and deploy AI-driven robots to perform cross-pollination efficiently. This “crop-robot co-design” approach allows GEAIR robots to pinpoint which flowers are ready for pollination, deposit pollen directly onto the exposed stigma, and work continuously, thereby saving time and costs. The test results showed that GEAIR's cross-pollination efficiency is comparable to that of skilled human technicians. 

AI tools for climate resilience and food security

Using over five decades of rice-cropping research data and AI, an international team of experts unraveled the complex relationships between climate, crop varieties, and management practices in rice systems. Their analysis showed that while improved nitrogen fertilizer use and solar radiation consistently improved yields, their impact varied significantly across seasons. The findings also showed that using the same rice variety over extended periods reduces rice plants’ response to nitrogen fertilizers and makes them more prone to disease.

Integrating the disruptive potential of AI with genome editing, protein design, high-throughput phenotyping, and omics technologies can further lead to more resilient plants that can withstand drought, disease, and other stresses. An international team of researchers from China, the USA, and Europe, including Aberystwyth University, published a roadmap for using this integrated approach in Nature. According to the report, AI can predict the best combinations of genes for yield, nutrition, and stress tolerance; design novel proteins to improve plant defenses and performance; and integrate highly complex datasets to guide smarter, faster breeding decisions.

Reaping the benefits

The breakthroughs of AI in various fields show that it has immense potential to create more solutions to current and future challenges. As this technology evolves, the critical question we must now ask is: Who will benefit the most from this? Just as biotechnology revolutionized farming, we must ensure that our farmers reap the largest share of AI's benefits in agriculture.

For further reading:

ISAAA Brief 57 Global Status of Commercialized Biotech/GM Crops

Biotech Updates