What I learned from visiting Centers: CGIAR digital transformation is about connecting what already exists
Ram Dhulipala, CGIAR Digital Transformation Accelerator Director at IRRI headquarters in August, outlining the vision for a shared, digital- and AI-ready ecosystem across CGIAR at IRRI Headquarters in the Philippines.
- DTA
- digital transformation
- Dhulipala
- Ram Dhulipala
- ICRISAT
- IRRI
By Ram Kiran Dhulipala, Director, CGIAR Digital Transformation Accelerator. Cover photo credits: CGIAR Digital Transformation Accelerator
My recent visit to a few CGIAR centers gave me the opportunity to step out of the office and see firsthand, through the examples of ICRISAT and IRRI, how digital technologies and AI are being used within CGIAR research Centers.
One thing stood out immediately, as I explained earlier: the digital transformation of agricultural research is already happening.
At the Centers I visited, I saw researchers and teams developing and using digital tools in many different ways. These efforts are often highly innovative and closely connected to specific research needs. But they are also, in many cases, fragmented.
That observation reinforced three ideas about where I believe CGIAR Digital Transformation Accelerator can add the most value.
From scattered digital innovations to shared infrastructure
Researchers do not necessarily need more digital tools. A strong drive for innovation is already underway within the CGIAR, ranging from agriculture-specific large language models (LLMs) and imagery-based insurance and lending applications to AI-integrated federated data platforms, etc.
The challenge is how to connect these innovations so that they can create capabilities that are greater than the sum of their parts.
At CGIAR, we approach this issue using the analogy of a city, a vision developed by Sandra Milach, CGIAR’s Chief Scientist, known as the "City Map" concept, which was first presented in Penang in May 2025.
A city government provides shared, community infrastructure – roads, electricity, water and other systems – that allow individuals and businesses to develop and operate. People and organizations can build their own houses or businesses, but they do so within a shared infrastructure and common standards that allow everything to work together.
Street-side connection points are provided by municipal authorities, enabling everyone to connect easily to the network; however, individuals and businesses must comply with standards defined by these authorities if they wish to integrate into the city.
Digital transformation needs a similar foundation.
Today, different teams across CGIAR may develop ten different applications, twenty datasets, two models, and other digital solutions for specific research questions. That is not a problem; in fact, this kind of experimentation is essential in science, which is all about discovery. But we also need the shared digital infrastructure, standards and connectors that allow these innovations to work together.
Take, for example, one of the projects we are conducting with Google.org, in which we’re developing, with Google Research, an AI model for digital phenotyping across CGIAR’s nine breeding Centers. This is a fantastic project that will enable breeders to make better breeding decisions and, ultimately, deliver improved crop varieties more quickly. However, to be trained and function effectively, the AI requires harmonized, consistent, and interoperable data from the field.
For the Digital Transformation Accelerator, this means acting as a unifying link across CGIAR breeding centers and ensuring that data are collected, stored, and processed in a strictly standardized manner globally, covering our 12 priority crops and more than 500 research stations.
This example illustrates our Accelerator’s system-wide role: we combine digital innovations emerging from diverse teams and Centers, helping to build the infrastructure that enables individual solutions to integrate into a broader digital ecosystem.
Digital transformation is becoming everyone’s business
A second reflection from my visits was how much broader the conversation around digital transformation is becoming across CGIAR.
In the past, engagement with our Accelerator was concentrated in a relatively small group of teams working on digital innovation and applications. Today, we are seeing interest from a much wider range of scientific disciplines. Digital is becoming multidisciplinary and touches every aspect of the science we do at CGIAR.
We recently completed our planning exercise for 2027 and received activity proposals covering all disciplines in our portfolio, across the twelve thematic areas we have defined where digital technology can improve agriculture.
Breeding teams are bringing forward ideas. Seed systems researchers are engaging. Phenotyping teams, including those working with technologies such as NIR spectroscopy, are exploring how digital approaches can advance their work.
This matters because digital transformation is not a discipline in itself. It is one set of technologies and tools used to conduct agricultural research across the board.
The diversity of ideas coming from CGIAR Centers is therefore a signal. It shows that researchers are not simply looking for generic digital tools; they are identifying where digital technologies, data and AI can help them address specific scientific challenges.
Our role is to help connect those ideas, identify common needs and solutions, and create opportunities for researchers from different disciplines to work together.
Transformation starts with understanding the people doing the work
Perhaps the most important lesson from visiting Centers was simply the value of being there.
From where I stand it is easy to develop strategies, issue calls and describe what digital transformation should look like. But how those ideas are interpreted in practice depends on the institution, its mandate, its culture, its teams, the regions of the world it serves and the context in which its researchers work.
Meeting people directly provides a very different perspective.
It helps us understand not only what researchers need, but also how they think about digital technologies and how they are leveraging them. It reminds us that transformation cannot simply be designed centrally and then delivered to researchers. It needs to be shaped by and with them.
For us at the Digital Transformation Accelerator, that means continuing to listen, connect and learn from researchers as we build our next phase of work.
My visits reinforced my belief that CGIAR does not need to start its digital transformation. The innovation is already there. The opportunity now is to connect it, build the infrastructure around it, and create the conditions for it to scale.
Our Accelerator is here to help.
