In AI, farmers find a productive ally

Phuvin Kongsawat used his training as an engineer to set up a company that delivers artificial intelligence-based solutions to test the quality of rice.

The chief executive of Easy Rice Digital Technology in Bangkok has no formal training in agriculture, but growing up in Thailand, the world's second-biggest rice exporter, he was familiar with rice production.

Phuvin's research showed how time-consuming it was to manually inspect samples of rice kernels to determine variety, quality and moisture content.