Punjab Govt Plans AI Rollout In Farming To Boost Productivity, Incomes

New Delhi, Jan 3 (KNN) The Punjab government plans to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) in agriculture to improve farm productivity, sustainability and farmers’ income, with support from the Centre of Excellence at IIT Ropar.

Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister Gurmeet Singh Khudian chaired a meeting at Punjab Bhawan to review progress and prepare a roadmap for field-level deployment of AI-based solutions, reported ET.

Focus on Farmer-Centric Technology

Khudian emphasised that new technologies must deliver tangible benefits to farmers. He assured full government support for pilot projects and for scaling up successful AI initiatives across the state. 

The minister also directed officials to install automatic weather stations, actively involve farmers in data collection, support horticulture clusters and expand AI-driven solutions for improving livestock productivity.

Capacity Building and Training Initiatives

The minister welcomed IIT Ropar’s proposal to launch national-level courses on precision agriculture and AI in agriculture to train youth and government officers. He said reserving seats for students and officials from Punjab would significantly strengthen the state’s agri-technology capabilities.

IIT Ropar’s Role and AI Solutions

Pushpendra P Singh of IIT Ropar informed that the Centre of Excellence, with a financial outlay of about Rs 310 crore supported by the Centre, is working on multiple AI-based solutions. 

These include crop advisory systems, multilingual farmer chatbots, yield estimation models, soil health analysis tools, weather forecasting applications and smart livestock management systems.

Towards AI-Driven Sustainable Farming

The collaboration between the Punjab government and IIT Ropar is expected to position Punjab as a leading state in AI-driven agricultural development, enhancing resource efficiency, climate resilience and long-term sustainable growth.

(KNN Bureau)