Agritech firm Zuari FarmHub Limited has announced a collaboration with the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) to develop digital platforms for agriculture.

The collaboration is to develop a bundle of data-driven digital tools for agriculture backed by scientific knowledge and learnings from real-world scenarios for improving the quality of advisories, Zuari FarmHub said in a statement. This will help improve soil quality and eventually boost farmer incomes.

Customised advisory

Madan Mohan Pandey, MD, Zuari FarmHub said through the partnership the company aims to provide customised advisory to the farmers. The advisories will be offered on digital mediums such as Jai Kisaan app as well as through Zuari FarmHub’s network of retail stores — Jai Kisaan Junction stores across Maharashtra , Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh.

Jacqueline Hughes, Director-General, ICRISAT, said that it was important for farmers to see the positive impact of improved soil on their crop yields and income before embracing new technologies. ICRISAT aims to develop a digital agriculture platform with multiple components such as cloud infrastructure with capabilities of machine learning and artificial intelligence, geo-database to store spatial and non-spatial data.

The partnership will also build web and mobile applications for data collection and information dissemination, computation models for the decision support system and reporting dashboards. These dashboards will provide actionable advisories to the farmers, the statement said. Utilisation of precision driven advisories will help the farmers improve their revenues as well as prevent damages to the crops by taking preemptive action against diseases and pests.

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