Syngenta Group app wins Red Dot Design Award

Syngenta Group has received the prestigious Red Dot Award for a new app, MAP Zhinong, which enables Chinese farmers to monitor and manage their fields using detailed, real-time data and information about growing conditions and crop quality. 

This is the first time an agricultural app has won the Red Dot Award, an international design competition that judges entries in multiple categories. Last year, Syngenta Group won in the sound design category for its new audio logo: a four-note signature theme and four-part suite of music representing the seasons of the agricultural cycle. 

By recognizing MAP Zhinong, this year’s award shines a spotlight on Syngenta Group’s broader efforts to help farmers around the world boost productivity, profitability and environmental sustainability by leveraging innovative digital technologies.

MAP Zhinong is a mobile app; MAP stands for Modern Agriculture Platform, and Zhinong means “smart agriculture” in Chinese. The app allows farmers to practice “precision agriculture”: an approach that seeks to optimize and minimize chemical inputs, including crop protection products and synthetic fertilizer, while prioritizing the health of crops, soil and the broader ecosystem. Precision agriculture is a key component of “regenerative agriculture”: an outcome-based food production system that nurtures and restores soil health, protects the climate and water resources, and enhances farms' productivity and profitability.

Maximizing productivity and sustainability 

Syngenta Group is heavily involved in research and development efforts to help farmers maximize both productivity and sustainability through regenerative agriculture. This is particularly important in China, a country that has 20 percent of the global population but just 7 percent of the world’s arable land. 

Each day, the MAP Zhinong app collects about 1.3 terabytes, or 1,300 gigabytes, of real-time data about farmland in China from satellite images, remote sensors and other sources. It uses AI and machine learning to translate this data into locally actionable insights farmers can use to make decisions on matters such as which seeds to plant, when to begin planting them, where spraying is (and is not) necessary and whether certain patches of farmland require irrigation. 

The app builds on the success of a network of more than 500 MAP (Modern Agriculture Platform) Centers operated by Syngenta Group China. At these MAP Centers, farmers receive advice and market guidance from agronomists, technologists and business counselors. They learn how to leverage new digital tools and advanced crop science and can also purchase seeds, fertilizers and other products and services. 

The MAP Zhinong app brings many of these capabilities into the palms of farmers’ hands. To date, more than 2 million growers on small-scale and medium-scale farms in China have used it to make informed decisions as they seek to manage a total of 32 million acres of farmland.