Google DeepMind will use AI to map the genes of sorghum, a crop that feeds 500 million people
A new partnership with India's ICRISAT aims to help breeders create drought- and heat-tolerant crops much faster.
Most AI news is about chatbots and coding tools. This story is about food. Google DeepMind has partnered with ICRISAT, an international crop research institute based in Hyderabad, India, to build an AI-powered genetic map of sorghum. The project was announced on October 15.
What is sorghum, and why does it matter?
Sorghum is a cereal grain that grows well in hot, dry places where crops like rice and wheat struggle. ICRISAT says it supports the nutrition of more than 500 million people in climate-vulnerable regions, mostly in Africa and Asia. As droughts and heatwaves become more common, crops like sorghum will become even more important.
What the project will do
ICRISAT has one of the world’s largest collections of crop seeds. Its genebank holds more than 44,000 sorghum samples from over 90 countries. Each sample carries a slightly different set of genes, built up over thousands of years by farmers and nature.
The partners will study a representative sample from this collection and build a “pangenome” atlas, a map of the genes found across many sorghum varieties, not just one. AI and machine learning will then help find useful combinations of traits, such as:
- Tolerance to drought and heat
- Higher yields
- Better nutrition
- Resistance to pests and disease
Breeding a new crop variety the traditional way can take many years, sometimes decades, of trial and error. The goal is to help breeders know where to look much sooner.
Who is involved
- ICRISAT, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics
- Google DeepMind and Google.org’s AI Collaborative for Food Security
- HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in the US
- University of Washington, Department of Genome Sciences
The atlas is planned to be openly available to researchers. DeepMind is also funding a three-year postdoctoral fellowship at ICRISAT, its first such fellowship in India, focused on genetic tools for chickpea, groundnut and pigeon pea.
“Pangenomes are valuable resources for accelerating the development of climate-resilient crop varieties.” — Damaris A. Odeny, ICRISAT
An honest note
An atlas is a research tool, not a new crop. Farmers will not see new seeds from this project immediately. The funding amount and timeline have not been made public, and no scientific results have been published yet. Questions about how genetic resources from many countries are shared fairly will also need careful handling.
Why it matters
AI’s biggest benefits may come from science, not chat. DeepMind’s earlier work on protein structures with AlphaFold changed biology research. Applying similar tools to crops could help farmers in the regions most affected by climate change, the people who often benefit least from new technology.
