Cultivating Progress: PH agritech inventions promise resilient future at CES 2025

By Shane Rachel del Rosario

Imagine a world where farms can monitor real-time plant growth, detect diseases in high-value crops, and shrimp farms could precisely and remotely monitor water quality.

This is the vision driving the Philippines’ pursuit for a resilient and sustainable future in agriculture, aquaculture, and industrial productivity. At the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) 2025, Filipino innovators will bring their groundbreaking technologies to the global stage, showcasing how cutting-edge solutions are helping them address today’s challenges in food security, environmental monitoring, and industry advancements while cultivating a promising future for the generations to come.

The average age of a Filipino farmer is between 55 to 59 years old, threatening the future of the Philippines’ agricultural workforce and its mission of achieving food security.

This drove Jeffrey A. Aborot and the Department of Science and Technology’s Advanced Science and Technology Institute (DOST-ASTI) to develop a technology that will entice the Filipino youth in pursuing agriculture-related careers.

Combining ICT and agriculture, they developed Gul.ai, a modular system powered by the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), which helps in determining effective parameter settings for growing specific crops.

Gul.ai is composed of two components: a plant-growing appliance component and a web application component for managing the appliance. Through the web application, end-users can control how the components behave and monitor the status of the appliance. Once set in the application, they can let the appliance support the growth of plants automatically.

Believing that a sustainable future starts with the youth, Aborot states that they aim to introduce Gul.ai as a teaching aid at the secondary and tertiary levels to help students understand crop management and plant growth.

“By introducing the Gul.ai System to students in the secondary level of education, students will be more aware of their options by introducing the Filipino youth to ICT and its potential applications to agriculture. Since this invention can be used as a teaching tool by the schools and universities, we hope that the number of enrollees to agriculture related courses will go up. We also hope that there will be more Filipinos interested in agriculture,” Aborot shared.

They developed ROAMER, a mobile robot which relies on computer vision, sensing, and navigation to monitor crop health and improve productivity. It also features a robot arm which uses a precision spraying pipeline that helps in ensuring the safe and efficient use of farm chemicals.

The mobile robot could map plantations, tag plants, and perform targeted spraying. It also has features designed for disease plant detection and classification, while allowing users to monitor crop health and view the number of plants in the farm.

Though ROAMER is not the first robot to be used in agricultural applications, it can be at par with its promising features in terms of runtime and spraying efficiency. Unlike other ground robots, it can navigate through unstructured terrain and conduct a more comprehensive scan of the farm. It can also perform both targeted and dispersed spraying, and has a longer runtime compared to drones.

Dr. Franz A. de Leon and the DOST-ASTI aims to introduce this to banana farms plagued by banana plant diseases, targeting Regions 10 and 11. They are also conducting further research for other high value crops with diseases that have symptoms which manifest visually.

Shrimp is one of the major aquaculture species in the Philippines, with 80% of the country’s total production from the aquaculture sector. Recognizing its contribution to the Philippines’ quest for food security, Engr. Robert O. Dizon and the DOST-Metals Industry Research and Development Center (MIRDC) developed iPOND, a low-range wide area network system designed to monitor and control selected water quality parameters for shrimp farms.

Engr. Dizon recalls a time when their team met a shrimp farm owner who inspired them to develop the invention, “His farm largely depended on manual labor in monitoring and controlling parameters such as temperature, salinity, pH, and dissolved oxygen. As the business implements intensive farming, slight changes where these parameters deviate from normal levels must be detected and corrected immediately. Monitoring of these parameters is subject to errors as a result of human limitations, including round-the-clock checking and inconsistent data gathering.”

He believes that something can be done to help the business. “Something can be done to help the business and make sure that shrimp production is at the optimum. Something can be done to help make technology available to businesses like his so that labor-intensive operations can be addressed,” he added.

iPOND aims to solve issues related to manual monitoring and control of parameters that influence water quality. Optimal water quality ensures the health and proper growth of shrimp. Otherwise, poor water quality can lead to stress, disease, and reduced growth rates, impacting the overall productivity of the farm.

Through this technology, shrimp farm owners can have remote access to real-time data, allowing them to make decisions to ensure that water qualities are stable. It also shows historical data for farm owners’ analysis and business decisions.

Aside from these features, iPOND proves that it can also be at par with similar technologies in the local and international markets. “First, the iPOND is a locally developed system for aquaculture farms. Second, its wireless node configuration can contain more than one sensor node which is more advantageous if used in farms with multiple pond layouts,” Engr. Dizon explains.

iPOND introduces an integrated system that includes real-time water quality monitoring components and an automation mechanism, enabling pumps, aerators, and blowers to take corrective actions and maintain optimal water quality in the pond.

These innovations will take center stage at CES 2025 in January 7-11 at Las Vegas, Nevada, the largest tech show in the world. Aborot sees their participation as an opportunity to showcase Filipino ingenuity and connect with experts who can help them improve their technology.

“We hope to gain feedbacks and suggestions on how we can improve more our product. Participating in CES will also allow us to connect with other technologists whom we may have shared interests and with whom we can work with in developing new technologies,” he said.

Engr. Dizon, meanwhile, expressed his gratitude to his agency and to the DOST-TAPI for its support, saying that the funding and technical support that they received were instrumental in “transforming [their] concept into a tangible solution ready for commercialization.”

When science and technology meets agriculture, a ‘green’ and resilient future is beyond reach. These technologies are testaments that our home-grown innovations can enhance food security, respond with today’s challenges, and offer a new global standard for sustainable farming and fishing. From the Philippines to the world, these technologies are committed to cultivating a future built on sustainability and efficiency.