Farmers will be able to click images of suspected infections on crops through smartphones and the Hudhud system will identify the disease.

From Alexa and Google in households to chatbots for e-commerce sites or intelligent mechanisms at work, smart assistants are quickly gaining ground as problem solvers in connected ecosystems like the UAE, Saudi Arabia and neighbouring gulf countries. Robotic guides, interactive humanoids and droids equipped to address customer queries are also finding a place in the public service infrastructure, thanks to organisations like DEWA who have hired mechanical employees.

Since food security is a priority for the UAE, which relies on imports for 80% of its nutritional requirements, AI is being explored as a game changing solution for tech-backed agriculture where monitoring crop-health can significantly scale up productivity, while cutting down costs. Following the initiation of a green revolution in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, now Egypt has also dived into the realm of smart agriculture, by setting up a system which will empower farmers to screen their produce for infections, and protect fields from any hindrance.

Named after a bird, the platform Hudhud promises to elevate the level of smart cultivation in the dry region, at a time when climate change is leading to accelerated desertification and drought across the globe. Farmers can click images of anomalies in plants that may appear to be infections, and send it to Hudhud's AI, which can help them figure out which diseases are holding back production at their fields.

The deployment of this mechanism is in sync with the times when other economies in the Middle East are using drones with computer vision, as well as AI which can monitor vegetation down to the leaf, for high-tech farming. Other than that, smart tech is also allowing farmers to know the amount of water that a plant requires, and data is helping them maintain consistency.

Researchers are even exploring hydroponics, where greens draw nutrition from the water and clean it up, so that fish could thrive in it as part of aquaculture.