ANNAM.AI and Syngenta Sign MoU at Bharat Innovates 2026 to Boost AI-Driven Farming

At the Bharat Innovates 2026 in France, IIT Ropar's ANNAM.At the Bharat Innovates 2026 platform in France, IIT Ropar's ANNAM.AI and Syngenta announced a major collaboration. The event was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron. The goal is to advance AI-powered, climate-smart agriculture across India.

The partnership will focus on building accurate models for crop health, pest forecasting and heat-stress prediction. It will also create AI-driven decision-support tools. These tools aim to help farmers make more informed, resilient and data-driven choices.

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ANNAM.AI is India's first Centre of Excellence for Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture. It is hosted at IIT Ropar under the Ministry of Education. During Bharat Innovates 2026 in Nice, France, ANNAM.AI signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Syngenta, a leading global agricultural innovation company.

The collaboration will combine two strengths. Syngenta brings deep agronomic expertise. ANNAM.AI brings AI innovation. Together, they aim to improve crop health monitoring, pest prediction and heat-stress intelligence. The end goal is to boost productivity, build resilience and support climate-smart farming for Indian farmers.

Speaking on the collaboration, Prof Rajeev Ahuja, Director of IIT Ropar, said: "Through the support of GOI and valuable steer from our honorable PM Shri Narendra Modi Ji, we are building AI-driven intelligence ecosystem that bridges the gap between research and real-world implementation on the farms. The collaboration between ANNAM.AI and Syngenta further demonstrates the importance of industry-academia partnerships promoting the adoption of next-generation agricultural technologies."

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Dr. Pushpendra Singh, Project Director of ANNAM.AI at IIT Ropar, added: "This partnership with Syngenta combines science and technology with deep agronomic expertise to enable more data-driven and climate-smart farming across India. Our aim to advance accurate crop health, pest forecasting and heat-stress intelligence models that can empower farmers with timely and actionable insights."

This partnership highlights a bigger trend. Industry-academia collaborations are key to adopting next-generation agricultural technologies. The project hopes to build a more resilient, sustainable and tech-enabled farming future. It will do this by combining research excellence, technical innovation and practical agricultural knowledge.

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Jeff Rowe, Syngenta Group's Chief Executive Officer, said: "At Syngenta we're creating breakthroughs for farmers in every field, to deliver higher yields with lower impact. ANNAM.AI presents a unique opportunity to contribute to a transformative, digital foundation for Indian agriculture that will benefit more than 600 million people in this country."

At Bharat Innovates 2026, ANNAM.AI is also showcasing its full AI ecosystem for agriculture. This includes hyperlocal weather systems that act as smart weather stations, continuously monitoring key environmental data with high precision. There is also an agri-advisory farmer chatbot. It delivers timely, hyperlocal advice on agriculture, weather and market prices. Finally, a digital decision-support system uses AI to identify crops, assess crop damage and manage pests.