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American Bollworm

American bollworm has been identified to attack more than 180 host plants. These host plants include beans, maize, tomato, legumes etc. It has caused so much damage to the fields and has developed resistance to so many insectides that it has been popularly given the name of a global pest.

In the moth phase they are brownish yellow in color with a black spot on the fore wings and a broad black patch on the margin of the hind wing. Larvae are green when they are young and their color varies when the larvae grows in size. The eggs are laid only singly on the leaves and are white in color.

They hatch in a time span of 3 to 4 days. The new larvae feed on the leaves after hatching and attach the near by bolls by keeping half of the body inside the bolls and half of its body outside.

The larval period is of around 25 days long whereas the pupal period is around 10 days long.

Some of the damage symptoms are as follows:

The squares which are affected by the American bollworm shows flaring up with its brackets spread out.

Holes can be seen on the squares by the internal tissues which are being fed by the larval and hollowed by it.

We have some more interesting articles coming up soon. Stay tuned!

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https://farmonaut.com/blogs/farming-blogs/voice-text-based-crop-issue-identification/

Satellite Imagery: https://farmonaut.com/satellite-imagery

Satellite Imagery Samples: https://farmonaut.com/satellite-imagery-samples

Why Farmonaut's Database is One of the Most Trusted Database

Farmonaut always strives to think from a farmer’s perspective to keep building the right solutions for the community. One of such steps is the development of Farmonaut Database. We have collected farming data from different government approved sources, analyzed them and refined it to bring the best formatted information available to the farmers.

The government database is a result of rigorous research of several years which includes information about what insecticide, pesticide, and/or plant growth regulator should be used for a given crop. However, the database is openly available in the format of a huge document file with hundreds of pages. It is really unreasonable to expect a farmer to download this large document and scroll through hundreds of pages to identify what the potential problem is with their crop.

Thus, the first thing we did is to sanitize this government approved database, and present it to the farmers in a user-friendly manner.

The segregated database is accessible through our android app and contains government approved information about 100+ crops, 300+ problems and 150+ chemicals (pesticides, insecticides, plant growth regulators etc.). The database includes very specific details of chemical usage such as Quantity, Formulation (g/ml)% and Dilution in water (L).

The Farmonaut database is presented in a fairly accessible form. A farmer can simply click on whether they want to check the information about a crop, a disease/problem or a government approved chemical.

If a farmer clicks on the “Crops” button and selects a crop from the given list of 100+ crops, he/she can see what government approved solutions they should be using if a certain disease/problem outbreaks in their farming field. For example, if a farmer selects Apple from the given list of crops, the database will show that if the apple crop has the problem of scab, they can use chemicals like: Captan 50% WG, Captan 75% WP, Copper Hydroxide 77% WP, Difenoconazole 25% EC) etc. with their specific details like Quantity, Formulation (g/ml)% and Dilution in water (L) etc.. Similarly, if the apple crop has the problem of Powdery Mildew, they can use chemicals like: Lime Sulphur 22% SC, Sulphut 80% WP etc. with their given specific details.

If a farmer clicks on the “Identified Issues” button and selects a problem/disease from the given list of 300+ problems, he/she can see what government approved solutions they should be using if that disease outbreaks in the given list of crops. For, example, if a farmer selects Black Rot from the given list of 300+ problems/diseases, the database will show that if black rot occurs in Coffee, then they can use Copper Oxychloride 50% WG with the given specific details. Similarly, if black rot occurs in Apple, then they can use Zineb 75% WP with the given specific details.

If a farmer clicks on the “Chemicals” button and selects a chemical from the given list of 150+ government approved chemicals (pesticides, insecticides, plant growth regulators etc.), he/she can see what different crops and different diseases can this chemical be used for. For example, if a farmer selects Zineb 75% WP from the given list of 150+ chemicals, they can see that Zineb 75% WP can be used in Jowar for Red Leaf Spot, Leaf Spot and Leaf Blight with the given specific details accordingly. Similarly, it will also show that Zineb 75% WP can also be in Wheat for Blight and Rust with the given specific details.

The Farmonaut database also gives a farmer an option to upvote the given government approved solution. By doing so, Farmonaut ensures another layer of trust on the provided sanitized database. Furthermore, a farmer can also share the database information on to Farmonaut Discussion Forum and several other Social media networks of their choice. A farmer can also save this information locally to his account for a quicker access through their profile.

At Farmonaut, we jumped one step ahead and added another layer of user friendliness to access our database. We have designed a system which is capable of identifying potential problems with a farmer’s crop just by their voice or text explanation. Read the following article to know in-depth about the Voice-Text Based Crop Issue Identification System.

The app is available for android on Google PlayStore:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.farmonaut.android

We have some more interesting articles coming up soon. Stay tuned!

Wait!!

Before that…

Follow us at:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/farmonaut/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYWOOPPKATLgh4L6YRlYFOQ

AppLink: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.farmonaut.android

https://farmonaut.com/blogs/farming-blogs/why-farmonaut-database-is-one-of-the-most-trusted-database/

Satellite Imagery: https://farmonaut.com/satellite-imagery

Satellite Imagery Samples: https://farmonaut.com/satellite-imagery-samples

Voice-Text Based Crop Issue Identification

In India, several thousand tonnes of crop gets destroyed every year due to incorrect usage of pesticides, insecticides, plant growth regulators etc. Whenever there is a disease outbreak in a farmer’s field, the first person whom they usually look forward to is the local vendor from whom they purchase their farming products like seeds, spraying equipments etc. In India, officially you need to have at least a certain relevant degree before you can start your own fertilizer shop. However, these norms are hardly practiced.

These local vendors have their own interest in mind, since they need to sell the products of the companies from whom they purchase the chemicals in bulk. Thus, more often than not, with no practical scientific knowledge, they end up suggesting completely incorrect solutions to the farmer.

One of the major aims of Farmonaut is to help farmers figure out what the problem is with their crop, and also provide government approved solutions for the problems identified by our system. Though the government has released a scientifically approved database, however the database is highly user inaccessible. The government database is in the form of document file of hundreds of pages. It is really unreasonable to expect a farmer to download this large document and scroll through hundreds of pages to identify what the potential problem is with their crop. At Farmonaut, the first thing we did is to sanitize this government approved database, and present it to the farmers in a user-friendly form.

Read the following article to know in-depth about the Farmonaut Database:

The voice-text based crop issue identification system is available on our Android app. A farmer can simply explain what issues he/she is facing with his crop and our system in real-time will identify the potential problem with the crop as well as the government approved solutions attached with the results as well. Given the vastness of India and a large number of languages being spoken in the Indian subcontinent, we can not expect our system to work only in one specific language. Hence, we have created our system to work in more than 50 languages. The farmers can ask their problems in a language of their choice and can still get government approved solutions in real time.

The following section below shows a few examples of how Farmonaut’s voice-text based crop issue identification system works.

The Voice-text based crop issue identification system works as a chat bot, wherein farmers can ask for the solution to their problems just like someone will message another user on a messaging service. The farmer can simply type their query into the text box or can speak about their query by clicking on the speech button. Once the speech of the farmer is finished or if farmer clicks on the send button after his text information about the problem is ready, the system will process their speech/text to identify the crop as well the problem being faced by the farmer. Upon correct identification of the problem, the system will return all the government approved solutions from which the farmer can select one of his choice.

For example, in the case above, the Farmer has asked in hindi the following query:

Asked Query: आम की फसल की उपज बढ़ाने के कुछ उपाय बताइये| अभी एकदम नयी फसल है|

Our system identifies within seconds that the user is looking for ways to enhance yield of their mango crop and hence, provides all the government approved solutions to the user about chemicals measures to be used to enhance the yield of his/her mango produce.

Some other examples of the Voice-text Based Crop Issue Identification queries are listed below.

There may be times when the voice-text based crop issue identification system is not able to identify the problem properly. There are 4 such cases which we want to highlight.

Case 1:

When our system has correctly identified the crop as well as the problem being faced by the crop, the system still gives the farmer an option to post his query on to the discussion forum to further proof check about his problem from the community.

Case 2:

When our system has correctly identified the crop of the query but not problem, the farmer can post this unsuccessful query onto the discussion forum to get remedies from the farming community itself.

Case 3:

When our system has not been able to identify both crop as well as the problem, and if the farmer feels that his/her query was correct, they can post this voice-text crop issue identification query on to the discussion forum to get remedies from the farming community.

A detailed article about the discussion forum and Farmonaut database will be available soon.

The app is available for android on Google PlayStore:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.farmonaut.android

We have some more interesting articles coming up soon. Stay tuned!

Wait!!

Before that…

Follow us at:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/farmonaut/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYWOOPPKATLgh4L6YRlYFOQ

AppLink: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.farmonaut.android

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.farmonaut.android

Satellite Imagery: https://farmonaut.com/satellite-imagery

Satellite Imagery Samples: https://farmonaut.com/satellite-imagery-samples

Normalized Difference Vegetation Index - NDVI

It has been quite a long time since scientists and agronomists are using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) to monitor and examine health of crops. The extent and benefits of NDVI have increased manifold with so many earth mapping satellites being launched every year to monitor earth’s surface in different wavelengths.

To calculated NDVI index, we need imagery from two different wavelengths, namely Near Infrared and Red band imagery. And the NDVI ratio is calculated as:

NDVI = (NIR – RED)/(NIR + RED)

From this formula, it is apparent that the density of vegetation (NDVI) at a given point in the generated image is equal to the difference in the intensities of reflected light in the red and infrared range divided by the sum of these two intensities.

The value of the NDVI index can range from -1.0 to 1.0.

The negative NDVI values are mainly due to clouds, snow and water.
The values of NDVI close to zero are mainly due to rocks and bare soil.
NDVI values ranging from 0 to 0.1 correspond to sand, snow or empty areas of rocks.
NDVI values ranging from 0.2 to 0.3 represent shrubs and meadows, and
NDVI values ranging from 0.6 to 0.8 indicate tropical and temperate forests.

In simple words, NDVI measures status of plant health based on how plants reflect light at certain frequencies. Though we cannot perceive it with our eyes, everything around us (including plants) reflect wavelengths of light in visible and non-visible spectrum. Taking into account how much amount of a certain wavelength is reflected, we can access the current status of plants.

We know that plants have chlorophyll which absorb sunlight for photosynthesis .Chlorophyll immensely absorbs visible light (0.4 to 0.7 microns) for photosynthesis, whereas structure of cells of leaves immensely reflect near-infrared light (0.7 to 1.1 microns). If a plant is healthy, it will have large amount of chlorophyll on it’s leaves and will absorb good amount of visible light from 0.4 to 0.7 microns and reflect quite less of it and vice-versa.

Farmonaut’s Crop Health Monitoring system is provided to farmers and monitors how much sunlight is reflected by the plants. We take into account this basic principle in identifying crop health status of an agricultural land.

For research purposes (non-farming usage), Farmonaut provides access to satellite imagery of any place around the through our android app.

For agricultural purposes, Farmonaut provides satellite based crop health monitoring system on our android app, through which farmers can select their field and identify the regions of the field at which the crop growth is not normal. Upon identifying that region of their fields, they can simply pay a visit to that part of the field and identify if the problem has already started. If it has not, the farmer can take preventive remedies by applying more fertilizers, plant growth regulators etc. If the problem has already started, they can simply explain their problem to Farmonaut’s crop issue identification system and get real-time govt. approved remedies. The satellite imagery is updated every 2-5 days and has a resolution of 10 meters which is 2 times better than google maps in rural India.

The app is available for android on Google PlayStore:

We have some more interesting articles coming up soon. Stay tuned!

Wait!!

Before that…

Follow us at:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/farmonaut/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYWOOPPKATLgh4L6YRlYFOQ

AppLink: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.farmonaut.android

Satellite Imagery: https://farmonaut.com/satellite-imagery

Satellite Imagery Samples: https://farmonaut.com/satellite-imagery-samples

Aphids

Aphids basically belong to Aphidoidea Family. They are small sap-sucking insects like greenfly and blackfly. However, they are not harmful to crops in early stage or in small or moderate numbers. Aphid’s infest severe damage to leaves and shoots and also causes damage to plant growth.

Follow us at:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/farmonaut/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYWOOPPKATLgh4L6YRlYFOQ

AppLink: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.farmonaut.android