Turning Agricultural Research Into AI Products: The CGIAR AI Hub Explained

Why It Matters

The hub bridges the gap between scientific knowledge and on‑the‑ground decision‑making, accelerating AI‑driven solutions that can boost yields and resilience across vulnerable agricultural regions.

Key Takeaways

• CGIAR AI hub launched 2025 to scale agricultural AI solutions.
• Hub partners UAE ecosystem, MBZUI, AI71, AIM for global impact.
• Five products in pipeline, including Agri LLM with 100+ languages.
• Gan Bankank AI accelerates crop trait discovery across 700,000 varieties.
• Design‑thinking ties field challenges to AI product development.

Summary

The CGIAR Artificial Intelligence Hub, launched in 2025 and based in Abu Dhabi, aims to convert the CGIAR’s decades‑long agricultural research into scalable AI products for the Global South.

Backed by the UAE’s AI and agri‑tech ecosystem and partners such as the Institute of MBZUI, AI71 and AIM for Scale, the hub follows a design‑thinking pipeline that brings real‑world farming challenges into the development cycle. Five products are currently in the pipeline, each targeting a distinct decision‑making layer.

The flagship Agri LLM is trained on more than 200,000 agricultural Q&A pairs and will deliver advice in over 100 local languages. Gan Bankank AI unlocks data on 700,000 crop varieties to speed trait discovery for breeders, while Hydrology AI, Policy AI and Livestock AI aim to provide climate‑aware recommendations at scale.

By embedding research‑grade insights directly into farmer‑friendly tools, the hub promises to improve productivity, reduce climate risk, and support policy formulation, positioning AI as a cornerstone of future food‑security strategies.

Original Description

Artificial intelligence is transforming industries worldwide, so why is its potential in agriculture and development still underused?

At CGIAR, through our Digital Transformation Accelerator, we launched the CGIAR AI Hub, a partnership designed to turn decades of agricultural research into cutting-edge AI solutions.

From Agri-LLM, a specialized large language model delivering tailored agricultural advice in more than 100 local languages, to Gene Bank AI, which unlocks insights from over 700,000 crop samples to accelerate trait discovery, the CGIAR AI Hub bridges the gap between science and real-world impact.

By translating research into practical tools, it puts knowledge directly into the hands of those who need it most: smallholder farmers and the systems that support them.