{"id":3057,"date":"2023-06-28T16:33:10","date_gmt":"2023-06-28T16:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/salarydistribution.com\/machine-learning\/2023\/06\/28\/field-to-fork-startup-serves-food-industry-an-ai-smorgasbord\/"},"modified":"2023-06-28T16:33:10","modified_gmt":"2023-06-28T16:33:10","slug":"field-to-fork-startup-serves-food-industry-an-ai-smorgasbord","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salarydistribution.com\/machine-learning\/2023\/06\/28\/field-to-fork-startup-serves-food-industry-an-ai-smorgasbord\/","title":{"rendered":"Field to Fork: Startup Serves Food Industry an AI Smorgasbord"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

It worked like magic. Computer vision algorithms running in a data center saw that a disease was about to infect a distant wheat field in India.<\/p>\n

Sixteen days later, workers in the field found the first evidence of the outbreak.<\/p>\n

It was the kind of wizardry people like Vinay Indraganti call digital transformation. He\u2019s practiced it for 25 years, the last dozen of them at companies like Ingredion, a Fortune 500 food-ingredient producer.<\/p>\n

The India project was the first big test of AGRi360 \u2014 a product suite for sustainable agriculture powered by NVIDIA Metropolis<\/a> \u2014 from the startup that Indraganti co-founded, Blu Cocoon Digital<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mobile App Taps Cloud Smarts<\/b><\/h2>\n

The pilot was both simple and effective.<\/p>\n

Farm workers took pictures of the plants, time-stamped and geotagged by a mobile app. They sent them to the Microsoft Azure cloud, where Blu Cocoon\u2019s custom models found patterns that enabled their uncanny prediction.<\/p>\n

Thanks to his background in the industry, Indraganti knows the value of such timely intelligence. It can help farmers and their entire food chain of vendors reap a bumper harvest.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a vast area, that\u2019s why we\u2019ve made \u2018AI for food\u2019 our mantra at Blu Cocoon,\u201d he said in an interview from the suburban Chicago office of the company headquartered in Kolkata.<\/p>\n

A Third Eye on the Field<\/b><\/h2>\n

AGRi360 acts \u201clike a third eye in the field,\u201d said Pinaki Bhattacharya, a microbiologist who heads R&D at Blu Cocoon Digital.<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a>
AGRi360 puts a dashboard of AI-powered tool in farmers\u2019 hands.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the pilot, it gave farmers an early warning to apply a small amount of pesticide to arrest the disease. An agrochemical company got a heads up about conditions in the area, helping it manage its supply chain.<\/p>\n

In the future, food producers that buy the crops will get key details about their microbiology. That helps in planning exactly how and when to process the crops into products to meet the regulatory requirements where they\u2019ll be sold.<\/p>\n

\u201cAGRi360 captures all these insights thanks to AI fed by pictures from farmworkers taken while they\u2019re doing their regular jobs,\u201d Bhattacharya said.<\/p>\n

Evaluating Seeds and Soils<\/b><\/h2>\n

The AI models got their start in research using computer vision to quickly assess soil conditions and the quality of seeds.<\/p>\n

Those skills are now part of the AGRi360 product portfolio along with products that monitor plant health and best practices in farming. Today, AGRi360 is in use in two countries, improving the quantity and quality of crop yields.<\/p>\n

One customer reports it\u2019s on track to source 100% of its products sustainably by 2025. Another saw revenues for an insecticide rise, thanks to the service.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur sales of Cartap 50sp grew 70% in six months thanks to AGRi360\u2019s ability to identify emerging crop infections early,\u201d said Vandan Churiwal, a director at Krishi Rayasan, a leading agrochemical supplier based in Kolkata.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a result, we\u2019re expanding our license with Blu Cocoon to bring AI-powered insights into every area of our business,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Faster Training and Inference<\/b><\/h2>\n

Initially, the startup used CPUs to train and run its AI models. Now it exclusively uses NVIDIA GPUs and the Metropolis framework for computer vision.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt used to take us two months to train a single AI model on CPUs,\u201d said Indraganti. \u201cNow, with NVIDIA A10 Tensor Core GPUs<\/a>, all four models in AGRi360 can be trained in a few hours \u2014 that\u2019s a game changer.\u201d<\/p>\n

The time savings add up quickly because the models need to be retrained for new crops, variants and soil types.<\/p>\n

GPUs reduced the time to complete inference jobs, too. Predictions that require 15-20 minutes on CPUs get generated in 2-3 seconds on NVIDIA T4 Tensor Core GPUs<\/a>. The speed also enables Blu Cocoon to test its models on large and growing datasets.<\/p>\n

From Shipyards to Snack Bars<\/b><\/h2>\n

Looking ahead, Blu Cocoon is extending its work in the food supply chain into managing containers in shipyards. It\u2019s already testing computer vision models for a customer in India.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve figured out a way to optimize movement of containers, reducing their time in the yard and minimizing touch points to save time and money,\u201d said Indraganti.<\/p>\n

The startup is even helping food producers create recipes with AI. It\u2019s already cooked up a gluten-free muffin for one packaged-foods client with plant-based cheeses, shakes and snack bars next on the menu.<\/p>\n

One customer reports the AI-powered system helped reduce the time to create a new recipe by 80%.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe named the company Blu Cocoon Digital because we look beyond the horizon and across the ocean for ways to nurture our customers\u2019 aspirations with digital technology \u2014 and it all runs on the NVIDIA platform and Microsoft Azure,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Read about Monarch Tractor<\/a> to learn other ways AI is advancing agriculture.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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