Innovating Agritech, serving the nation

Two student teams from Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) have taken top honors in the first edition of the Agritech Hackathon or “Agrithon,” organized by the Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Security Authority (ADAFSA) and held as part of the Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Security Week.

Billed as a hackathon, the Agrithon was launched to tackle challenges facing the food security sector. ADAFSA’s goal is to tackle food-security challenges through collaboration, innovation, and the pushing of boundaries to identify agritech solutions.

One of the MBZUAI teams named the “Masdar Boys” won first prize for developing a dashboard, which integrates multiple machine learning models for visual plant disease diagnosis, optimal animal clinic placement, and disease outbreak zone classification. The second prize-winning team named “Green AI” built a machine learning framework for plant disease classification.

The Masdar Boys were represented by MBZUAI students Gokul Karthik Kumar, Sahal Shaji Mullappilly, Abhishek Singh Gehlot, Bokang Jia, and Muhammad Uzair Khattak. Green AI were represented by Mugariya Farooq and Sarah AlBarri.

“Congratulations to both of the teams! Your efforts represent the best of what MBZUAI should and can achieve,” MBZUAI President, Professor Eric Xing said.

The Agrithon was held for the first time in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and is one of the main events of Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Security Week, the largest sustainable agriculture, food security and biosecurity event in the MENA region.

The winning teams were awarded 30,000 AED for their work over the 2 days of the hackathon and for their winning results. ADAFSA authorities are interested in further developing the student’s work and looking at possible development for applications in the field.