Seed-Chatbot
It-Da: Bridging Tradition and Technology through Seed Informatics
Background
The Crisis of Seed Monopoly and Dependency
Today’s global food system is threatened by a seed monopoly where a few corporations control the market through strict intellectual property rights, forcing farmers into a cycle of legal and economic dependency. This industrial dominance has caused a 75% loss in plant genetic diversity since the 1990s and carries a heavy environmental toll, as evidenced by Korea’s kiwifruit case where farmers once had to pay 15% of their gross sales as royalties to foreign patent holders. Such restrictions on saving and sharing seeds make our food systems dangerously vulnerable to climate change and corporate control, turning the common heritage of humanity into a restricted industrial asset.
The Informatics Response: From Tacit Knowledge to Digital Assets
To counter this, we adopted an informatics approach by conducting in-depth interviews with 8 native seed experts to preserve vanishing agricultural wisdom. By transforming their undocumented "tacit knowledge" into a structured digital bio-archive using RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) technology, we built a platform that provides grounded, expert-level guidance. This digital bridge empowers farmers to bypass corporate monopolies and reclaim seed sovereignty, ensuring that Korea’s genetic heritage is no longer a fading oral tradition but a searchable, sustainable, and actionable resource for future generations.
Methodology
Field-Level Knowledge Acquisition
Inspired by the need for seed autonomy, we took a step beyond laboratory breeding. We focused on "Information Sovereignty." We visited and conducted in-depth interviews with 10 leading native seed experts across Korea. These guardians of biodiversity possess "tacit knowledge"—the nuanced, undocumented wisdom of how native seeds survive and thrive in specific local environments.
The Informatics Response: From Tacit Knowledge to Digital Assets
To counter this, we adopted an informatics approach by conducting in-depth interviews with 8 native seed experts to preserve vanishing agricultural wisdom. By transforming their undocumented "tacit knowledge" into a structured digital bio-archive using RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) technology, we built a platform that provides grounded, expert-level guidance. This digital bridge empowers farmers to bypass corporate monopolies and reclaim seed sovereignty, ensuring that Korea’s genetic heritage is no longer a fading oral tradition but a searchable, sustainable, and actionable resource for future generations.
RAG
LLMs
Seed Chatbot
Results
Our RAG-based chatbot, It-Da, serves as a Digital Bio-archive. It lowers the barrier for urban and professional farmers to adopt native species, reducing the dependency on patented commercial seeds. By democratizing this specialized knowledge, we are securing a resilient food future where seeds are once again a shared heritage, protected by the power of informatics.