New robot transforms plant breeding

Chinese scientists have recently developed the world's first robot capable of conducting the full-process breeding of plants, highlighting the deep integration of biotechnology and artificial intelligence technologies in the agricultural intelligent breeding sector.

GEAIR, the name of this new AI-based robot model, is expected to facilitate a breeding shift from experience-driven to precision agriculture. The study was published on Monday in the journal Cell.

A scene once limited to a science fiction movie has now become a reality in a greenhouse, where GEAIR accurately identified a flower and extended its robotic arms to gently complete hybrid pollination. It shuttled effectively among the flowers and precisely carried out the whole breeding process.

"AI and robots offer vast opportunities in shifting hybrid breeding toward precision agriculture to enhance crop yields, reduce costs and promote sustainable practices," said Xu Cao, a researcher at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Hybrid breeding, which seeks to ensure the "superior birth and raising" of crops, is an important way to enhance both crop yield and quality. However, massive repetitive cross-pollination operations are time-consuming and labor-intensive, according to Xu.

Compared with the process involved in producing well-known hybrid rice varieties, GEAIR can apply new-generation breeding technologies, such as a speed-breeding approach, to achieve rapid customized breeding of superior varieties.

Through AI visual recognition and positioning technologies, GEAIR is able to accurately move among crops to perform cross-pollination operations, thereby enhancing breeding efficiency.

For instance, in soybean breeding, the robotized hybrid breeding option can achieve rapid creation of stigma-exserted male sterile lines, which is expected to break through a bottleneck in soybean hybrid breeding and significantly increase per-unit yield, Xu revealed.

"Our new study initiated an intelligent breeding model of integrated biotechnology, AI and robot labor, marking China's successful pioneering efforts in the construction of a closed-loop technology system for intelligent robotized hybrid breeding," Xu said.

"It also shows the application prospects of 'AI for science' in the sector of biological breeding," he added.

The study team has demonstrated the potential of GEAIR in boosting efficiency and lowering costs through automated, faster breeding of climate-resilient crops, said Yang Minghao, an associate researcher of the Institute of Automation of the CAS.

Xinhua