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Indian farmers using smartphones to fight fast-moving crop killer
By Eric Marx
An app that uses artificial intelligence to identify plant disease is being deployed in India as an early-warning system to stop the advance of a crop-destroying caterpillar that is having a devastating impact on maize crops in Africa.
Plantix, a diagnostics smartphone app developed by Berlin-based Progressive Environmental and Agricultural Technologies (Peat), has used its geo-tagging software to create a live tracking map of verified cases of the fall armyworm in India, which was first discovered in a field of maize in Karnataka in May.
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“Based on this we are sending push notifications to tens of thousands of our users through our Plantix app,” said Simone Strey, CEO of Peat.
In addition to the image recognition feature, there is a community portal and crop guide that serves as a kind of digital extension service throughout the entire growing cycle.
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“We have been working in partnership with Plantix since 2016,” said Dr. Srikanth Rupavatharam, a scientist with International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in Hyderabad. “The armyworm live tracking tool enables us to monitor and focus on those states and districts that are infected most. This is crucial to fight the spread of this pest effectively in a country as huge as India, and help farmers receive effective advisories on the ground.”
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