From the Division of Seed Science at IARI New Delhi to the AI governance tables of Wageningen — a practitioner's arc across two decades, six countries of residence, and one recurring question: how does knowledge reach the farmer who needs it most?
I am a Senior Researcher and Seed Systems Advisor at Wageningen Social and Economic Research (WSER), Wageningen University & Research, Netherlands. I hold a dual role as seed-systems expert and AI governance/data stewardship lead — a combination that would have seemed unlikely when I was fingerprinting Plantago species in a New Delhi laboratory two decades ago, and which still occasionally surprises colleagues at both tables.
My work centres on a deceptively simple problem: quality seed is the single highest-leverage input in smallholder agriculture, yet in much of Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, access to it remains fragile, seasonal, politicised, and poorly documented. I have spent 18 years trying to understand why — and building things that help.
Those things have included community seed banks in Somaliland and South Sudan, digital seed variety registries in Uganda and Nigeria, mobile seed intelligence apps in Myanmar, a Recruitment Fit Score tool for NFP online courses, a GDPR-compliant RAG pipeline for processing anonymised interview transcripts at WUR, and — most recently — a prototype advisory system that uses local-language large language models to deliver agronomic guidance to smallholder farmers in settings with limited connectivity and no functioning extension services.
I trained at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) in New Delhi — the institution that produced the seed science underpinning India's Green Revolution — where I received the IARI Gold Medal for academic performance in the MSc programme. Before moving into development research, I worked in the private sector with Incotec, which gave me a rigorous grounding in seed enhancement technologies (priming, coating, pelleting) that I have found unexpectedly useful in understanding the formal seed industry's relationship — often fraught — with informal seed systems.
I joined Bioversity International in India in March 2014, initially supporting the Seeds for Needs programme in the Indo-Gangetic Plains. I moved to the Netherlands in 2019, transitioning first to WCDI and then to WSER as the digital and AI dimensions of seed systems work expanded. I hold a Dutch passport and a Dutch A2 language diploma, and have lived in Wageningen with my family since 2019.
Outside work I write occasional essays at arnabgupta9.substack.com — on seed politics, AI ethics, colonial agricultural history, and neutral genetic mutation theory — and am probably thinking about what to cook for dinner.
Seed physiology, RAPD fingerprinting of Plantago species, and seed quality enhancement. Recipient of the IARI Gold Medal for outstanding MSc performance.
Seed priming, coating, and pelleting for commercial varieties. Co-authored an industry paper on seed enhancements as the next revolution in crop establishment.
Seeds for Needs programme across the Indo-Gangetic Plains. Co-led India's first low-energy genebank in collaboration with ICAR. Fieldwork extended into Myanmar (2018–2019).
Expanded fieldwork to Sub-Saharan Africa: Uganda, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan, and Somaliland. Led community seed bank work in fragile and conflict-affected settings.
Dual role: seed-systems expert and AI governance lead. Active projects in Sudan, South Sudan, Somaliland, Uganda, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, and Myanmar. Leading WUR's GenAI governance community.