In September, the Coca-Cola Co. launched the Save the Orange project, which is the first project of the MIT Generative AI Impact Consortium. Coca-Cola is a founding member of this consortium, which will use artificial intelligence (AI) to solve some of the world’s biggest challenges.
The consortium also includes OpenAI, Analog Devices, Tata Group, SK Telecom and TWG Global, and it seeks to harness the power of generative AI for public good.
Christina Ruggiero, president of the global nutrition category at Coca-Cola, says this project is very personal to the company as it sells juice in about 140 countries. Orange juice is the top-selling juice for the Coca-Cola in almost every country in the world, except India and Pakistan, where it comes second to mango juice.
“The Coca-Cola Co. wants to be at the heart of innovation and has a very long standing relationship of working with consumers, working with trade, working with industry, working with farmers, but we want to give the products that consumers love most to them in a very accessible way in their households around the world, and for us, and certainly for the juice part of our organization that starts with the orange,” she says.
She says that citrus greening is a huge challenge globally, not just in Florida, but in Brazil, the world’s largest citrus producer. Citrus greening, or huanglongbing, now infects nearly 47% of trees in the country. She says Coca-Cola has had a long-standing relationship with growers in Florida and Brazil and says she saw a need to connect the global research together.
“We want to be the CPG company that partners with MIT to solve real-world problems,” she says. “We want to be able to have AI be in service of humanity. As we were thinking about and exploring those types of concepts and what type of partnership we would have, I flagged this as something really important that we can do. It connects not just to our business, but to our company’s purpose. The Purpose of Coca-Cola is about refreshing the world and making a difference. And for me, this was a material impact that we can make for an industry that needs our help.”
Ruggiero says Microsoft has helped develop a platform to help the Save the Orange research team share findings and understandings. Invaio Sciences, a global biotechnical company, has also joined the Save the Orange project to bring expertise in crop health.
“How can we actually come together on a platform and prioritize different research initiatives to be able to arrest and or stop citrus greening collectively, instead of everyone investing money and working on projects in different silos,” Ruggiero says. “It’s really kind of a revolutionary moment.”
And that collaborative effort is what Amy O’Shea, director and CEO of Invaio Sciences, says makes this effort unique.
“We’re trying to pull together not just industry like Fundecitrus, the premier research organization in Brazil, but also industry partners, like Invaio, where we’ve got some solutions and we have a pipeline, but we were, we acknowledge that it’s going to take a basket of tools right to solve this problem,” O’Shea says. “Having Coca-Cola being the No. 1 juice bottler in the world, standing behind this, having the scientists at MIT who have just absolutely tremendous wherewithal for scientific exploration and discovery, all come together on this — it’s a pretty exciting time.”
O’Shea says Invaio has developed an antimicrobial that’s delivered in a non-invasive insert directly into the tree’s vascular system. She says, so far, the results in Florida have been promising, with an average of 30% reduction in drop and an increase in Brix.
Project Goals
While the Save the Orange project recently hosted an official kickoff at the campus of MIT, Ruggiero says the big priority will be a visit to Brazil in November for all the principals of the project as well as the research team.
“We are moving pretty quickly from kicking off to initial projects, and within the first 45 days, we’re getting everyone out to the trees to see the information,” she says. “We’re also creating a database right now with all of the data that’s available from all of the research that’s been done over the last couple of decades. So, our call to action is to try to get everyone working on this with as much information as they need, actually in 2025 itself.”
Ruggiero says this Save the Orange project has several components. First, how to protect the tree and boost its immunity to the bacteria that cause citrus greening. Second, to learn more about the psyllids and the role the insect plays in the ecosystem. Third, understanding the bacteria that cause citrus greening, which she says has been the biggest challenge in research. And lastly, a delivery mechanism for inoculation.
O’Shea says the consortium will look at the entire growth cycle of trees to understand the best practices moving forward, whether that’s citrus under cover for the first year, to prophylactic applications in young trees and then how treatments change once the trees come to bearing age.
“We know that this is going to take a multitude of solutions. It’s not just, you know, it’s not just an antimicrobial or disease fighting,” O’Shea says. “You need to think about psyllid control. You need to think about nutrition. You need to think about biostimulants or fertilization. You need to think about gene-edited trees.”
Ruggiero says while citrus greening has been a difficult pathogen to fight, she says time is on the Save the Orange’s side, with more than 20 years of research and with the power of AI, she sees the ability to leverage technology to speed up processing the data.
“We’re really hoping that the integration of using this technology will help us to do things that, historically, we couldn’t do before, and a little bit of elevating the call to action,” she says.
Ruggiero says, too, a goal of Coca-Cola is to make sure what results come out of the Save the Orange project will be accessible to all citrus growers and not proprietary, which she says is a big part of the company’s philosophy.
“We’re really trying to make sure that we are helping the growers make a step change in their viability,” she says. “It’s really important that whatever solutions we come up with, our suite of solutions for Coca-Cola is about, it’s being open-sourced. This is for all of the farmers in the world and the growers in the world to have a better crop.”
Ruggiero says it’s hard to really put a set timeline on science, but the project will involve testing solutions in greenhouses and nursery environments before a trial with growers to assess hypotheses in citrus groves, with the goal of providing sustainable solutions.
“If somebody has something that they feel really excited about from a technology standpoint, they might have a solution; we’re really happy to learn about that as well and continue to learn and grow,” she says.
Ruggiero says while citrus greening has been devastating in Florida and Brazil, she’s quick to point out that’s not the only challenge that citrus production has faced in those areas. Hurricanes and a real estate boom have also impacted citrus production in Florida. Meanwhile, Brazilian citrus growers have also faced a changing climate that has impacted production. She hopes the Save the Citrus project will look to help stabilize the future of the citrus industry.
“A lot of it is really looking at genetic sequencing, looking at how things evolve with temperature, climate, humidity — where we have the ability to actually study trees around the world, which also is really interesting,” she says. “There’s actually three different types of psyllids that carry greening bacteria and being able to see if there’s learnings that we can pull across. I’m cautiously optimistic, but we’re certainly putting in everything we can to help it gives its best chance of success.”
