The Institute aims to strengthen global food security by improving the lives and livelihoods of more than 43 million smallholder farmers through scalable digital advisory tools, training programs, and technical assistance teams.
Mohammed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) has launched the pioneering Agricultural Artificial Intelligence Institute (IAAI) in collaboration with the Department of International Affairs of the UAE Presidential Court and the Gates Foundation. The Institute aims to strengthen global food security by improving the lives and livelihoods of more than 43 million smallholder farmers through scalable digital advisory tools, training programs, and technical assistance teams.
IAAI was launched as part of Abu Dhabi's AI for Agriculture Ecosystem, a global platform that leverages artificial intelligence to strengthen agricultural resilience, addressing critical gaps in agricultural data related to language, geography, crop types, and farming practices. By creating a trusted central repository of high-quality agricultural data, the Institute will be able to train AI models safely and effectively, supporting global efforts to strengthen food security.
This foundational dataset powers an open access advisory system that can provide highly accurate, real-time insights on crops, pests, soils, weather and markets. These tools enable farmers to make smarter decisions, increase productivity, and build resilience in the face of climate change.
The institute's core research programs will develop practical and deployable solutions, including multimodal diagnostic models that detect crop diseases and pests from images and data, voice-based advisory systems that speak local languages and adapt to farmers' literacy levels, and geographically and temporally aware large-scale language models (LLMs) that incorporate real-time data and local knowledge.
Her Excellency Mariam Almheiri, Director of International Affairs at the UAE Presidential Court, said this initiative reflects the UAE's ambition to leverage artificial intelligence to support the global food system. He emphasized that MBZUAI's collaboration with the Gates Foundation exemplifies a new model of international partnership that brings world-class research, innovation, and training to countries that need it most.
MBZUAI President Eric Xing highlighted the university's commitment to advancing AI for social benefit. He said the initiative represents a positive investment in global food security, building the datasets, technology and training pathways needed to provide local, real-time and scalable support to millions of smallholder farmers in Africa, India and beyond.
Gates Foundation Chairman Bill Gates said the project addresses the harshest impacts of climate change on smallholder farmers by providing practical, data-driven solutions directly to them. He praised the UAE's leadership in supporting this initiative, which aims to strengthen food security and empower farmers in a warming world.
The launch of IAAI marks a major milestone in global agricultural innovation, combining AI expertise, international collaboration, and data-driven solutions to improve the resilience, productivity, and livelihoods of farming communities around the world.
