The idea came to fruition when Dr Omkar interacted with farmers and was told about the difficulty in identifying crop disease.
Bengaluru :
With just a click, sugarcane growers will be able to identify as many as five diseases in their crop using the app ‘Safal Fasal’.
The app is being developed by Dr SN Omkar, chief research scientist, Department of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, who has finished programming the algorithm that identifies diseases. A database of remedial measures is also being put in place, in case a disease is detected.
The idea came to fruition when Dr Omkar interacted with farmers and was told about the difficulty in identifying crop disease.
While many farmers would be adept at assessing the health of their crops, newcomers in the sector would benefit the most from this app.
“There are young agriculturalists, who may not be acquainted with crops and diseases. This will help them immensely. Also, since a few farmers whose crops have been affected by diseases, could visually inspect their crops because of experience, there are many farmers who would benefit immensely by the democratisation of this information. This can even prevent the large scale loss of crops due to disease,” Omkar told The New Indian Express.
Experts, including those from the biotechnology sector, have helped pick five popular diseases prevalent in the region and ways to identify them with certain characteristics. This has helped in programming the apps’ algorithm that analyses pictures through image processing in the cloud. With just five pictures of the yield, one can know the state of the sugarcane. The app will provide health reports as well.
At present, the team is working on increasing the precision of identifying diseases through pictures. “We are trying to get a larger database of pictures of more healthy and unhealthy crops. Currently, the precision of the app is at 86%,” said Dr Omkar.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Good News / by Pearl Maria D’Souza / Express News Service / December 10th, 2019