Innovative solutions presented at ‘Agri Rural Ideathon 2026’

Around 26 teams of agri-entrepreneurs and student innovators presented a range of innovations for sustainable farming and rural development at the ‘Agri Rural Ideathon 2026’ here on Friday.

The event held at the College of Agriculture, Vellayani, was organised by K-AgTech LaunchPad, a NABARD-funded collaborative project of the Kerala Agricultural University (KAU), the Western Sydney University and industry partners.

The innovation-driven ideas were presented under the themes NextGen AgTech Innovations, Community-Centric Rural Solutions, and Climate Action for Farms and Villages.

“The proposals addressed key challenges such as labour shortages, climate resilience, post-harvest losses, food safety, plastic pollution, and farmer income instability. The ideas included automated MultiFarm bots, precision harvesting equipment, solar-powered irrigation and wild animal deterrent systems, biodegradable packaging derived from agricultural waste, genomic tools for plant variety authentication, and community-led rural enterprise models,” K-AgTech LaunchPad said in a statement.

Among the innovations presented at the event were a ‘village-to-value’ community enterprise model aimed at enhancing farmer incomes, a mycelium-based biodegradable packaging solution offering alternatives to plastic, and a Genomic SSR profiling platform for accurate plant variety identification.

Inaugurating the event, Small Farmers’ Agribusiness Consortium (Kerala) managing director Rajesh Kumar S., stressed the importance of strengthening agricultural value chains. He underscored the need for startup promotion and closer collaboration with Farmer Producer Organisations (FPO) and Farmer Producer Companies (FPC) to ensure sustainable incomes for farmers.

Allan Thomas, director and principal investigator, K-AgTech LaunchPad; Jacob John, Dean of Faculty (Agriculture); Dinesh R., general manager, District Industries Centre (DIC), Thiruvananthapuram; and Vishal B., Corporate Acceleration, Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM), spoke.