Agriculture is the foundation for the development of human society and economic activities. The driving force for the improvement of the agricultural industry comes from the development and application of cutting-edge technologies.
The current rapid development of human civilization and technology has brought unprecedented challenges and opportunities to the agricultural industry. To meet the challenge, the world’s leading organizations have made it a top developmental priority to explore how agriculture can become smarter and more digital.
As China’s largest online platform for agriculture, Pinduoduo has made agriculture the centerpiece of our growth strategy. In 2020, we recorded US$256 billion of Gross Merchandise Value, of which US$42 billion comprised agricultural products. Given our unique position connecting over 16 million farmers directly to our 824 million users, we focus on investing and innovating along all stages of the agricultural value chain to digitize and improve it. We want to play our part to feed more people and feed them better in a sustainable way.
In order to achieve this goal, in 2020, Pinduoduo took the lead in hosting the inaugural Smart Agriculture Competition, which attracted young digital agricultural science teams from all over the world as well as many top domestic growers, to take on the challenge of growing strawberries with AI technology in greenhouses on the Yunnan Plateau. Through this competition, we sought to explore applications of digital agricultural technologies and their feasibility for wider adoption. Witnessed by global scientists, the inaugural competition encouragingly demonstrated that digital technologies can tangibly enable the agricultural industry and can effectively improve the economic value of agricultural products. The winning team comprised of young scientists has commercialized their learnings from the competition and gone on to share their know-how with farmers.
This year, we hope to build on the inaugural competition and construct a “more open, more advanced, and more practical” agricultural technology innovation platform. We will work with the world’s best agri-tech research teams to grow agricultural products that are high quality and high yield through the use of interdisciplinary growing and computing technologies, while abiding by sustainable farming practices. With the pandemic still casting a shadow, people are becoming more interested in food safety and quality issues, which makes the exploration of this multi-disciplinary topic particularly important and timely.
Timeline of Events
Objectives of the Competition
The participating teams have to grow tomatoes within 6 months using various technologies such as nutritional modelling, growing environment control, and algorithmic controls, so as to produce high-quality and high-yield tomatoes through green and sustainable practices. The teams must also demonstrate the commercial viability of their solutions.
Final scores will be determined based on evaluation of following aspects:
- Quality: This year's competition has a strong focus on the quality of tomatoes, mainly including taste, nutritional profile, and whether the growing process follows green standards.
- Yield: Yield is an important component of commercial value, and we expect contestants to balance quality and yield.
- Energy Consumption and Cost Control: Teams should consider the output-to-input efficiency ratio in a balanced manner, and evaluate from a cost perspective the sustainability and economic profitability of their solutions.
- Algorithm Strategy: We expect the participating teams to incorporate advanced computing algorithms into the growing processes, which will help them quickly assess and make targeted adjustments according to crop needs or external environmental conditions, so as to achieve a stable supply of high-quality and tasty produce.
- Commercial Viability: The competition organizers aim to explore efficient and high-yielding growing practices through the format of this scientific competition. Therefore, the discussion about commercial viability is necessary and important. The participating teams will be required to summarize their growing practices and present the potential for commercialization in the form of a written business plan.
Awards
The competition will score the participating teams according to our criteria, and rank teams based on their growing results and evaluations by the judging panel. The participating teams will be ranked by their scores from high to low. The rewards include:
- A total award pool of over RMB1,000,000, with the top award being RMB450,000
- Have chance to receive additional research funding and support from competition supporters on implementation of smart agriculture technology
Eligibility
We expect the participating teams to meet following criteria:
1. Team composition needs to be interdisciplinary and across various fields, with members coming from different institutions such as colleges, research institutions, corporates, etc.
2. Contestants should have sufficient time and spirit to devote to the competition
3. Team should have abundant digital growing experiences
4. All team members should be under 35 years old, with no fewer than 5 people in each team
5. Each team should appoint a primary contact person responsible for liaising with the organizing committee who is fluent in both Chinese and English
If help is needed in forming teams, the organizing committee is more than happy to assist. Please feel free to contact us through [email protected]