Prof. Dr. Kochupillai presented her paper “Creating a Digital Marketplace for Agrobiodiversity and Plant Genetic Sequence Data: Legal and Ethical Considerations of an AI and Blackchain Based Solution” at the conference ‘Towards Responsible Plant Data Linkage: Global Challenges for Food Security and Governance’, hosted by the Alan Turing Institute and the University of Exeter on March 19th, 2021.
Prof. Kochupillai’s explained how her paper addresses the lack of evolvement of robust marketplaces for agrobiodiversity, including for derivatives such as plant genetic sequence data. The paper argues that such trends are caused by the narrow scopes and directions of the scientific research, as well as the uni-directional data/knowledge flows, from the formal sector (industry, academia) to the informal sector (farmers). Hence, the development of blockchain/DLTs, as well as AI and Machine Learning systems, could significantly contribute in diversifying both the direction of scientific research as well as the data/knowledge flows in the agricultural sector.
This research is fundamental for investigating ways to achieve a positive impact on the supply of agrobiodiversity and its beneficial components, as well as inspiring additional multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder research to create robust digital marketplaces for agrobiodiveristy which can benefit farmers, researchers, and the environment.
