Indore (Madhya Pradesh): Indian Institute of Technology Indore conducted a one-day industry-academia workshop on “Research Innovation for Commercialisation” at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Pune. The workshop focused on the importance of fostering collaboration between industry and academia to drive research innovation towards commercialisation. It paved the way for meaningful collaborations that can revolutionise various sectors, particularly in the field of agriculture.
Topics reflected on historical collaborations such as the Green Revolution, which transformed Indian agriculture and similar revolution driven by AI and ML-based research which could position India as a global leader in food production and agricultural technology.
“Discussions were also held on how integrating technology with agriculture can enhance productivity and sustainability, underscored the necessity of multi-stakeholder collaboration to modernise and upgrade the Indian agricultural sector, need for region-specific Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) models to tackle challenges related to crop growth and agricultural sustainability,” IIT Indore media coordinator Sunil Kumar said. Besides, a consortium of scientists and academicians engaged in discussions on the critical challenges faced during research, product commercialisation, and intellectual property (IP) management.
“They explored how AgriHub could serve as a crucial enabler by offering a collaborative research ecosystem, a dedicated database repository for Indian crop data, and high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure to support AI/ML-based computational research,” Kumar said. The major outcome of this workshop has been an agreement to sign the MoU with the Biotech Consortium India Limited (BCIL), a company promoted by the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India for developing collaborations on various technologies for the agriculture sector.
During the workshop key industries working in the area of precision agriculture, genome analysis and seed testing have also agreed to develop joint programmes under the AgriHub project. In addition, various startups and NGOs have also expressed their willingness to develop joint programmes which can benefit the farmers.
The workshop was conducted by prof Aruna Tiwari, principal investigator of the AgriHub Centre of Excellence (COE) at IIT Indore and had speakers including prof Narendra S Chaudhari, vice-chancellor ASTU, Dr Anil Rai, assistant director general (ICT) ICAR, Lakshmi Panat, scientist C-DAC Pune, Dr Prashant Dhakephalkar, director of Agharkar Research Institute.
