An app that answers farmers’ queries on pests and diseases

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT-Hyderabad) have developed an app — Crop Darpan — which allows farmers to get an instant prescription for the pests and diseases that their crops are beset with.

All that the farmers need to do is download the app from Google’s Play Store and answer a few queries. One question will lead to another until it narrows down to the problem for which a prescription will be available in no time.

Presently available in English and Telugu, the app offers solutions for all the diseases and challenges that the cotton crop faces.

“In a week, we are going to open a window for paddy farmers. The app can replace an extension officer. A farmer with a smart phone can download the app and answer the queries that it poses,” Krishna Reddy, an IIIT-H faculty and Chief Investigator for the Indo-Japanese project that seeks to provide simple solutions for farmers, told BusinessLine.

The app interface

How it was built

Krishna Reddy said the team brought in data science elements such as generalisation-specialistation, concept hierarchy, decision trees, rule-based systems and data mining to build the crop diagnosis tool.

The architecture allows the researchers to add other languages and crops at a later stage.

“The questions cover a variety of issues related to pests, bacterial and fungal diseases and issues related to nutritional deficiencies,” he said.

Krishna Reddy, one of the earliest researchers in e-agriculture in the country, said that the app can act as an agriculture expert and help the farmers in assessing the problem and suggesting a prescription.

Reddy had earlier developed web-based agricultural extension services called e-sagu.

Srinivas Annapalli, Aravinda Gadamsetty, Revanth Parvathaneni and Saideep Chennupati are some of the other members of the team led by Reddy.