After more than 8 months of competition, the final summit of the second "Duoduo Agricultural Research and Technology Competition" was held online a few days ago, and the tomatoes planted by the "Tomato Fast Growth" team won the championship with a yield and quality that far exceeded that of traditional cultivation. The team is composed of young "new farmers" from Wageningen University in the Netherlands, China Agricultural University, Northwest A&F University, Polar Star Agriculture and Bayer CropScience, and adopts the algorithm strategy of "human-machine fusion intelligence" to convert advanced planting experience into algorithms, and assist growers to grow high-yield, nutrient-rich fruits.
On April 25th, the final summit of the "Second Duoduo Agricultural Research And Technology Competition" was held online.
The second "Duoduo Agricultural Research And Technology Competition" was jointly sponsored by Pinduoduo with China Agricultural University and Zhejiang University, and provided technical guidance from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and Wageningen University. Similar to the first edition of "Strawberries grown in science and technology", this year's competition is "science and technology tomatoes", with the goal of "growing more and growing well", while focusing on environmental sustainability and commercial feasibility. The competition attracted more than 120 researchers from 15 teams around the world. In the end, four teams reached the final, including academic researchers with university backgrounds and practitioners of commercial cultivation.
Since October last year, the finalists have been growing tomatoes in Beijing, Shanghai, Zhejiang, the Netherlands and other places through software remote control of the intelligent greenhouse located at the kunming competition base in Yunnan Province, combined with precision agriculture technologies such as nutrition, computer vision and deep learning. "In the meantime, although we can't see these crops every day, the human-machine fusion algorithm helps us in real time to constantly revise the planting strategy." This also validates the future business value of the algorithm, which is to help growers improve efficiency, reduce error rates, and break down the limitations of time and space. Xu Dan, captain of the champion team "Tomato Fast Growth", said.
Champion team "Tomato Fast Grow" captain Xu Dan (second from right) and the team members. Photo by Peng Lai
In addition to "Tomato Fast Growing", the other three teams also performed well. The "Zhijia" team led by China Agricultural University finally won the Excellence Award, and the "Nongsheng Brain" team with diversified scientific research background and the "Xi persimmon" team composed of young scholars from Zhejiang University won the Excellence Award. The judging results showed that the average yield of tomatoes from the four finalists was about twice that of conventional cultivation, and the nutritional value also met the industry standards of high quality.
"Our global agri-food system requires innovative and sustainable solutions," Carlos Watson, FAO Representative in China, said at the summit, "The Duoduo Agricultural Research And Technology Competition provides an innovative platform to attract young scholars, technologists, entrepreneurs, research institutions and technology companies to create practical solutions to the practical problems of smallholder farmers according to specific needs." ”
Race for "Better Tomatoes for More People"
As one of the "four major fruits" promoted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, cherry tomatoes are an important cash crop widely planted in the mainland and an important agricultural product for farmers to increase their income and become rich. However, so far, in many domestic production areas, the cultivation of cherry tomatoes still faces bottlenecks such as extensive environmental regulation technology, low degree of mechanization and automation, and the yield and quality cannot meet the expectations of consumers.
The farmer's cultivation should be used first. To do a good job in agriculture, we must first have a methodology that keeps pace with the times. In this competition, the four teams showed their strengths and opened up a scientific and technological planting model that was completely different from the previous "facing the loess and facing the sky".
For example, how to make the meteorological information and light conditions of agricultural production "leaning on the nose" become controllable? The "Digital Tomato Intelligent Control Cloud Platform" developed by the "Zhijia" team has realized the functions of dynamic monitoring of greenhouse environment, tomato growth image monitoring, and plant disease identification. When the real-time monitoring data of the greenhouse environment exceeds the threshold, the system will send a text message to remind the operator; in the same way, when the system recognizes problems in leaves, flowers, fruits, etc. at different growth stages through visual technology, it will automatically make accurate early warnings.
The "Digital Tomato Intelligent Control Cloud Platform" developed by the "Zhijia" team.
Everything depends on photosynthesis, and carbon dioxide plays an important role in the high quality and high yield of facility agriculture. In view of this, the new farmers of the "Xi Persimmon" team have developed a new type of lightweight greenhouse carbon dioxide enrichment technology, which promotes plant photosynthesis while effectively avoiding the secondary emission problem caused by direct application of carbon dioxide but limited plant utilization. Thanks to this, the team produced fruits of excellent quality, with vitamins, amino acids and lycopene levels far exceeding those of traditionally grown tomatoes.
For disease management, the "Tomato Fast" team's approach is to install relevant sensors in the greenhouse, through a set of self-developed disease management system, while monitoring the indoor climate and plant growth, predicting the risk of common fungal diseases, helping growers avoid most of the disease risks. This is also one of the important reasons why the team achieved the highest yield and higher quality in the competition.
In addition, unlike other agricultural science and technology innovation competitions, the "Duoduo Agricultural Research and Technology Competition" not only assesses yield, quality and green and sustainable production methods, but also pays special attention to the commercial feasibility of the results of the competition.
"The algorithm model accumulated by this competition, we will next carry out a small-scale commercial pilot in the cooperation base, and soon hope to promote it to the whole country, so that different growers in different regions and different facility types can benefit." Xu Dan said. Four years ago, Xu Dan returned to China from the Netherlands, which is known for its smart greenhouse agriculture, to start a business and start growing healthy and delicious vegetables and fruits on the outskirts of Beijing with top-notch glass greenhouse cultivation technology. Among them, tomatoes are the main products, and they have been supplied to the Olympic Village six times during this year's Beijing Winter Olympics and Winter Paralympic Games.
"This competition provides a great opportunity for young scientists to accurately understand the needs of growers and develop targeted products." He Yong, dean of the College of Biosystem Engineering and Food Science at Zhejiang University, said, "This competition has built a platform for traditional agricultural planters and experts and scholars in the field of agricultural scientific research, and can promote the practical achievements of agricultural science and technology to be applied to the vast fields." ”
Ancient agriculture lies on the loess Young agriculture is held in AI
Today's post-90s generation can no longer grow vegetables?
Non also. Among the four teams shortlisted for the finals, about 80% of the post-90s members, including many farmers who are determined to serve their hometowns. "The reason why I am engaged in agricultural research is because I have been accustomed to adults digging in the loess soil with their hands since I was a child, and high-intensity labor has been exchanged for a life of only food and clothing." Zhu Chang'an, the captain of the "Xi Persimmon" team and a doctoral student at Zhejiang University, is in the countryside, and the traditional way of working has left a deep mark on him. "I hope to contribute a little bit to improving the efficiency of agricultural production."
Finalist of the second "Duoduo Agricultural Research And Technology Competition". Photo by Peng Lai
Similarly, Zhu Qingzhen, the leader of the "Nongsheng Brain" team and a post-90s automotive engineer, learned about the backward development of agricultural technology and equipment in the mainland after his work, he took the initiative to give up car building and instead pursued a doctorate in agricultural engineering.
"Although I have walked out of the small village where I was born and raised, I still hope to change the relatively backward agricultural production methods in my hometown." Zhu Qingzhen said. In this competition, the "Nongsheng Brain" team standardized the experience of growers, historical data and cherry tomato image recognition data, established the knowledge structure and knowledge base of cherry tomato planting, and developed a cloud hosting service system on this basis, which will significantly improve planting efficiency after commercialization.
The vast countryside has a lot to offer. "Zhijia" is also a team of post-90s pickers. Although many of the team members are still Doctoral students and have relatively little planting experience, they are fully committed. Sometimes, they are scientists, developing cool new algorithms; sometimes, they are workers, handling, installing, and debugging various types of equipment; sometimes, they are programmers, developing the front and back end of the intelligent control cloud platform, forming a prototype of the product.
"Talent is the first resource, and agricultural and rural scientific and technological talents are the foundation for strengthening agriculture and rejuvenating agriculture." Li Daoliang, dean of the International College of China Agricultural University and a scholar of the Ministry of Education, said at the final summit of the second "Duoduo Agricultural Research And Technology Competition" that "to create a high-level agricultural research talent team, we need to stimulate the vitality of everyone, and at the same time pay attention to the shaping of team spirit." The competition has built a platform for agricultural talents to exchange and exchange, which is a very good talent training model. ”
Zhao Chunjiang, head of the judging team of the competition and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, believes that the "Duoduo Agricultural Research Science and Technology Competition" has carried out forward-looking innovation and attempts in terms of algorithm model to smart planting practice, and formed a number of practical technical solutions. This is of great significance for the future development of smart agriculture in the country.
Located in Kunming, Yunnan Province, the "Duoduo Agricultural Research And Technology Competition" competition base. Photo by Peng Lai
As China's largest uplink platform for agricultural products, Pinduoduo has regarded agriculture as one of its core strategies since its inception. In August last year, the company announced the "10 Billion Agricultural Research Project" aimed at facing the major needs of agriculture and rural areas, promoting the digitalization of agriculture with cutting-edge technology. Among them, the "Duoduo Agricultural Research And Technology Competition" has been held for two consecutive years to promote the accelerated application of precision planting technology in agriculture.
"The driving force for improving the agricultural industry comes from the development and application of technology." Zhu Jianchong, senior vice president of Pinduoduo, said at the summit, "Through this competition, we can clearly see that the low-cost application of agricultural technology can improve the production and management level of agriculture and effectively improve the yield and quality of agricultural products. We firmly believe that the iteration and promotion of these technologies can create more added value for agricultural products, thereby bringing more income to the majority of agricultural growers. ”
[Written] Ye Dan
【Author】 Ye Dan
【Source】 Southern Press Media Group South + client