World's largest international academic conference in the field of Agtech will be held in Jeju Island in May. The 6th International Conference of the World Agricultural Engineering Association, called "CIGR 2024," will be held at the Jeju International Convention Center (ICC) from May 19 to 23, the CIGR 2024 Organizing Committee said on the 27th.CIGR International Conference is the largest academic conference in the AgTech field held every four years, and more than 1,000 academics and industry officials in the AgTech field, including agricultural engineering, will attend this time. Agtech is a combination of agriculture and technology, collectively referring to agriculture-related industries based on digital technology.CIGR International Conference will be held in Korea this year, following Aarhus, Denmark, in 2016 and Quebec, Canada, in 2020, and the Korea Association of Agricultural Machinery hosted the event, and it is jointly organized by the Korea Association of Agricultural Engineering and the Korea Society of Biological Environmental Control.The theme of the event is "Digital Agriculture; Feed the Future and Save the Earth." Digital agriculture refers to innovative agriculture that dramatically improves productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness as ICT technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), big data, and cloud converge in the era of the 4th industrial revolution. The event will include Steven Thompson, a national research program leader at the National Institute of Agriculture (NIFA) under the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Claus Sorensen, a professor at Aarhus University in Denmark who is an authority on digital agriculture as well as autonomous agricultural machinery, Dr. Aubrie O'Rourke, director of space agriculture research at NASA's Kennedy Center, Eldert van Henton, a professor at Bahenningen University in the Netherlands who leads the development of agricultural robots worldwide, and Kyusung Lee, director of the Korea Rural Development Administration's KOPIA Philippine Center, which spreads K-agricultural technology abroad. In addition, a total of 19 prominent scholars are scheduled to give lectures by each department, and 560 papers will be presented.CIGR 2024 will also present the 'Armand Blanc Prize' that encourages young experts in agricultural engineering and recognizes their achievements. The award was created to honor Professor Blanc, president of the Institute National Agronomique (INA) in Paris, France, who was president of the CIGR from 1950 to 1962, and was established to encourage young research and developers in agriculture and bio-system engineering. The award is given to authors under the age of 30 who present their best papers at the CIGR World Congress or International Conference. In addition, participants who presented excellent papers this time will be given a separate Best Presentation Award prepared by the Korea CIGR 2024 Organizing Committee.Source : https://www.mk.co.kr/en/economy/10975407