Farmers speak, NDIZI listens: how AI is helping put farmers first in crop breeding
What if crop breeding started by listening better? In Tanzania, AI powered tools are helping researchers capture farmers’ insights at scale, turning everyday observations into data that can shape the next generation of crop varieties.
- Artificial Intelligence
- Crop breeding
- gender
Farmers speak, NDIZI listens: how AI is helping put farmers first in crop breeding
What if crop breeding started by listening better? In Tanzania, AI powered tools are helping researchers capture farmers’ insights at scale, turning everyday observations into data that can shape the next generation of crop varieties.
Over a growing season, farmers notice far more than a survey can easily record: how a crop responds to erratic rainfall, how it cooks, stores, sells, or performs under local conditions. These observations shape whether a variety is adopted or abandoned, yet much of this knowledge has historically been difficult to capture systematically at scale.
That challenge inspired the NDIZI project (NLP to Develop and Innovate Zero-shot Intelligence), an initiative led by the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT that explores how artificial intelligence can help agricultural systems better listen to farmers. What began as a research project has since evolved into Sikia, an AI-enabled interviewing platform already integrated with ClimMob and being used for farmer feedback elicitation and market intelligence gathering.