HYDERABAD: Researchers at IIIT-H have created Crop Darpan, an application, to help farmers with issues related to crop growth, pests, fungal diseases and nutritional deficiencies.
The main aim of the app, which was developed under an Indo-Japan joint research laboratory project, is to mimic the presence of an agriculture expert who is not only well-versed with visual symptoms of diseases plaguing crops but can also guide farmers on measures to tackle it.
“It was however designed in such a way that it is scalable for all crops and can be extended in all Indian languages. We have already begun work on seeding the system in Hindi,” said Srinivas Annapalli, who was part of the team that developed this app.
“The system comes seeded with a hierarchy of questions related to visual symptoms displayed by the crops. These range from high-level generalized questions to more specific ones. When the farmer confirms the presence of the symptom, he is guided to the next question ultimately narrowing down on the exact diagnosis of the crop’s ailment. Advice on measures to mitigate the problem is also given,” said Annapalli.
Before Crop Darpan, the institute had developed an agro-advisory system at the farm and village level called eSagu. “In eSagu, the presence of educated village-level coordinators bridged the gap between farmers and agricultural scientists. It also has issues of scalability and generality that Crop Darpan hopes to overcome,” said Krishna Reddy, professor, who guided the team that developed the app. He said that with a mobile tool at his disposal, the individual farmer is more empowered to handle plant protection.
The research is a joint venture under the India-Japan joint research laboratory project titled ‘Data science-based farming support system for sustainable crop production under climatic change’ with other participating institutes such as IIT Hyderabad, IIT Bombay, Professor Jayashankar, Telangana State Agricultural University, Hyderabad and the University of Tokyo.