Visitors to the office of Wang Yaojun, an associate professor at China Agricultural University's College of Information and Electrical Engineering, are immediately drawn to an all-white device. Roughly the size of a microwave, the device functions as a miniature smart farm. At its core lies the Shennong Large Model, developed by the university. The machine features 36 intelligent agents and serves over 100,000 farmers nationwide.
To build a proprietary core database, Wang turned to the university library, a trove of agricultural knowledge. Over seven months, a team of faculty and students systematically scanned more than 3,000 books. By combining these with publicly available sources, they constructed a specialized database of 20,000 volumes for the Shennong model.
To ensure the model was truly practical, the team traveled to more than 20 provinces across China. They collected real-world data on soil composition, irrigation practices, pest and disease outbreaks, and extreme weather impacts, covering the entire agricultural production chain.
Version 1.0 was released in December 2023, offering capabilities such as agricultural knowledge Q&A, semantic understanding of agricultural texts, text summarization and decision support for farming operations. Version 3.0, launched in October 2025, introduced 36 specialized intelligent agents for scenario-specific cultivation guidance, significantly lowering the barrier to use.
Read more at People's Daily Online
