Mutus Tech: enhancing pest management tools with BridgeAI

This case study presents Mutus Tech, a company developing AI-powered tools to support farmers in pest management, crop health, and agricultural decision-making. Focusing on the challenge of invasive pests such as fall armyworm in West Africa, Mutus Tech adapted its Pezego application to deliver locally relevant, data-driven advice through a combination of computer vision and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) techniques. Through support from the BridgeAI internship pilot, delivered by The Alan Turing Institute, the company collaborated with a doctoral researcher to enhance the technical robustness and scalability of its platform. Key contributions included restructuring the codebase for modular, multi-region deployment, improving documentation, and refining the system’s architecture to separate shared and localised knowledge components. User engagement with farmers and agricultural advisors informed the design of more accessible interfaces and introduced features to support human oversight of AI-generated recommendations. This work demonstrates how targeted research placements can accelerate AI development in SMEs while ensuring solutions remain user-centred and context-aware. It also highlights the role of collaborative, interdisciplinary approaches in delivering scalable digital tools that support sustainable agriculture and real-world impact. Learn more: https://zenodo.org/records/19486109