CISH Lucknow develops 'Bagwaan Mitra' app to help farmers during lockdown

LUCKNOW: The Central Institute for Subtropical Horticulture (CISH), a Lucknow based ICAR lab, has developed a mobile app, Bagwaan Mitra, to help farmers and other stakeholders during lockdown due to Covid-19.
Due to lockdown, there have been limited field visits by scientists and one to one meetings between farmers and experts from the institute. The app is simple and user friendly with a special feature to convert speech into text.
"It will help farmers who can not type. As soon as they speak the institute would receive the text message through the server," said director, CISH, Shailendra Rajan.
Many a times farmers are not able to describe the problems or diseases in their crops. The app will allow farmers to send pictures of the diseased plants along with the message, said the director. This will also help scientists in diagnosing and identifying the correct disease.
This mobile app will also offer information on common pests, diseases and disorders along with their control.
Weather forecast based suggestions will be one of the most important features for the users.