The CropGPT project: Call for a global, coordinated effort in precision design breeding driven by AI using biological big data

Since the beginning of humanity, people have been seeking practical solutions to meet their most basic need: food. The advent of agriculture greatly increased the food supply and led to a rapid increase in the human population. Enhanced food production via agriculture can be attributed to both improved crop management practices and crop breeding through genetics. Plant (crop) breeding has been categorized into four major stages based on the techniques employed (Wallace et al., 2018). 1) Breeding 1.0 originated approximately 10 000–12 000 years ago and primarily relies on phenotype-based selection.