ICRISAT And Soket AI Partner To Advance AI Solutions For Climate-Resilient Agriculture

Bringing together agricultural science and artificial intelligence to build smarter, more resilient agrifood systems

As climate shocks become more frequent and farming decisions increasingly complex, access to timely, reliable and locally relevant agricultural knowledge has never been more important.

Imagine if decades of agricultural research, climate intelligence and field experience could be accessed instantly to help farmers, researchers, extension systems and policymakers make better decisions.

To help turn that vision into reality, ICRISAT and ​ Soket AI Labs signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on 27 May 2026 to jointly develop next-generation AI solutions that can strengthen agricultural research, climate resilience and decision-making across the Global South.

This collaboration brings together ICRISAT’s globally recognized expertise in agricultural science, climate adaptation and digital innovation with Soket AI’s advanced capabilities in artificial intelligence and foundational model development.

“Artificial intelligence has the potential to reshape how agricultural knowledge is created, accessed and applied,” said Dr Himanshu Pathak, Director General of ICRISAT.

“To deliver impact, AI systems must be grounded in science, trusted data and local realities. Agriculture demands more than generic AI, it requires systems that can reason with context and support better decisions.

“Together, we aim to develop AI solutions that address the complex challenges facing agriculture across the Global South,” said Dr Pathak.

Soket AI is an emerging Indian AI company supported under the Government of India’s IndiaAI Mission, to develop large-scale AI models optimized for reasoning, multilingual intelligence and applications relevant to the Global South.

The ICRISAT-SoketAI collaboration will focus on developing reasoning-driven AI systems that support more informed decision-making across crop production, climate risk management, natural resource management, and agrifood systems development.

Areas of collaboration will include:

• Building large-scale agricultural knowledge corpora
• Developing reasoning-driven AI systems for agriculture
• Strengthening AI-powered advisory and decision-support tools
• Exploring domain-specific foundation models for agriculture
• Advancing multilingual AI solutions that improve accessibility for farmers and agricultural stakeholders

"Together with ICRISAT, we look forward to developing next-generation AI solutions that can create meaningful impact for agriculture and farming communities at scale,” said Mr Abhishek Upperwal, Founder and CEO of Soket AI.

As agriculture enters the era of artificial intelligence, ICRISAT is advancing efforts to harness AI for accelerating scientific discovery and delivering actionable insights to farmers. This partnership brings together complementary expertise to develop next-generation agricultural intelligence systems, including domain-specific reasoning models, high-quality datasets, and structured knowledge frameworks.

Led by Dr Shalander Kumar, Principal Scientist, and Dr G Kishore Kumar, Associate Scientist, the initiative will help build robust AI solutions that support research, innovation, and evidence-based decision-making across agri-food systems. Contributing to CGIAR's digital transformation agenda, this collaboration will combine frontier AI capabilities with agricultural science to develop evidence-based solutions for researchers, extension systems, policymakers and farmers across the Global South.

About The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics
The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) is a pioneering International Organization committed to developing and improving dryland farming and agri-food systems to address the challenges of hunger, malnutrition, poverty, and environmental degradation affecting the 2.1 billion people residing in the drylands of Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and beyond.

ICRISAT was established under a Memorandum of Agreement between the Government of India and the CGIAR on the 28 March 1972. In accordance with the Headquarters Agreement, the Government of India has extended the status of a specified “International Organisation” to ICRISAT under section 3 of the United Nations (Privileges and Immunities) Act, 1947 of the Republic of India through Extraordinary Gazette Notification No. UI/222(66)/71, dated 28 October 1972, issued by the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India.