Towards building a smartphone-based system for improving the efficiency of farms in India

Despite the variety of traditional and IT-based agricultural information delivery approaches, the majority of Indian farmers are not acquiring or provided with actionable agricultural information in a timely and regular manner. A lecture titled “Crop Darpan: Towards building a smartphone-based system for improving the efficiency of every farm in India” will be organised by the Department of Computer Science and Engineering on September 08, 2021, at 11.00 am to address the issue of the lab to the land gap in agriculture. Prof P Krishna Reddy, from IIIT Hyderabad, will talk about the eSagu system, an IT-based farm-specific agro-advisory system field-tested on about 50 field and horticultural crops in hundreds of villages.

Since 2004, research efforts are being made at IIIT Hyderabad to investigate the building of IT-based agro-advisory systems to deliver actionable agro-advice to every farm field of India in a timely manner. In this connection, they have built the eSagu system and village-level eSagu system. They are also currently investigating the building of the Crop Darpan system. The Crop Darpan App is available for cotton and rice crops at Google Play Store and Apple App Store. In this talk, Prof P Krishna Reddy will share the experiences of building these systems and the future plans.

Biography of the speaker:
Prof P Krishna Reddy is the head of the Agricultural Research Center and a member of the Data Sciences and Analytics Center research team at IIIT Hyderabad, India. From 2013 to 2015, he has served as a Program Director, ITRA-Agriculture & Food, Information Technology Research Academy (ITRA), Government of India. His research areas include data mining, database systems and IT for agriculture. He has published about 189 refereed research papers which include 30 journal papers, four book chapters, and eight edited books. He is a steering committee member of the Pacific-Asia knowledge discovery and data mining (PAKDD) conference series and the Database Systems for Advanced Applications (DASFAA) conference series. He has delivered several invited/panel talks at reputed conferences and workshops in India and abroad. Since 2004, he has been investigating the building efficient knowledge agricultural knowledge transfer systems by extending developments in IT. He has conceptualized the notion of Virtual Crop Labs to improve applied skills for extension professionals. Currently, he is investigating the building of the Crop Darpan system, which is a crop diagnostic tool for farmers, with funding support from the India-Japan Joint Research Laboratory Program. The eSagu system, an IT-based farm-specific agro-advisory system, has got several recognitions including CSI-Nihilent e-Governance Project Award in 2006, Manthan Award in 2008 and has been a finalist in the Stockholm Challenge Award in 2008 and received PAKDD Distinguished Service Award in 2021.

Join this illuminating lecture on September 08, 2021, at 11:00 am and gain valuable insights into building a smartphone-based system for improving the efficiency of every farm in India.

Register here: https://srmap.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_qITnmUdMQjqkvFSM9yGCzA