ICTs for Agriculture Knowledge Management (AKM) in India

L.B. Hugar*, V.C. Patil**, P. Priya, A. Prabhuraj, V. Balaji and

N.T. Yaduraju

ABSTRACT

Globally, the interaction between the ICT-for-RD sector and ICT-in-agriculture

have been weak and inadequate. The presence of expert-validated information on

agricultural production and processing is highly limited in the digital realm. The National

Agricultural Innovation Project (NAIP) has supported a Consortium project on the use of

ICTs in developing a multimedia data base of Best Management Practices (BMPs) for

few important crops and provide solutions to farmers’ problems. Through the activities of

the Consortium, leading professionals in agriculture and ICT sectors have developed key

new products and platforms; these form the nucleus of a much larger collaborative effort

that will occur globally. The lead institutions developed the practice of a “virtual KVK’

that brings the reach and openness of ICT4RD approaches together with the rich and

relevant domain knowledge in agriculture. It does so by bringing closer tablet computers,

mobile devices, texting gateways and standard web and voice interfaces.

Salient findings from the work carried out so far in the consortium mode by

UASD and UASR are briefly presented here. Useful and relevant bilingual multimedia

content on important crops such as paddy, cotton, pigeon pea and chick pea was

developed in collaboration with IIT Kanpur and IIITM, Kerala by using their web

platforms namely Agropedia indica and AKMIndia, respectively. A very popular aAQUA

portal developed by IIT, Mumbai was used to communicate answers by the scientists.

_______________________________________________________________________

* : Dr. L. B. Hugar, Dean (Agri.), College of Agriculture, UAS, Raichur, Karnataka, India

(lbhugar@gmail.com)

** : Dr. V. C. Patil, Chair Professor, Precision Agriculture Research Chair, King Saud University, Riyadh,

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (vcpatiluasd@gmail.com)

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Agropedia indica portal consists of Knowledge Models (KMs), multimedia

content namely gyan dhara (certified content) as well as janagyan (emergent knowledge)

on paddy, cotton, pigeon pea and chick pea. The KMs are the structural representation of

knowledge by using symbols to represent pieces of knowledge and relationships between

them, which can be used to connect seamlessly to the knowledge base in Agropedia using

semantic tools. Certified content on paddy, cotton, pigeonpea and chickpea consisted of

476 posts on various concepts from seed to seed.

The AKMIndia portal mainly contains sub windows such as online fertilizer

recommendation system (OFRS), Web GIS based weather information, Web GIS based

soil nutrient advisory system and online video channels. In Karnataka, OFRS is becoming

popular among farming community since it acts as a decision making tool. As on now

there are 1243 members registered. Reports on 26 crops were sent to 1160 farmers

residing in 38 talukas of 17 districts in Karnataka state.

In a typical aAQUA thread, a farmer submits a problem, and agriculture experts

or other farmers provide solutions. aAQUA has 1729 posts and about 1418 threads of

questions covering 2500 members from Karnataka state. Similarly, under crop

recommendation forum, there are 345 posts and 329 threads under UAS

Dharwad/Raichur recommendation forum. Mobile texting is another important area

where in free crop tips were sent to around 10000 farmers. A series of 44 training and

workshop sessions on ‘Use of ICTs in Agriculture’ have so far been held. Still a very

long way to go!.

Key Words: Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), Agriculture, Web

portals, Multimedia content.

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INTRODUCTION

India is one of the biggest and strongest Agro-based nations in the world. In spite

of alarming increase in the population, it has managed self sufficiency in Agriculture,

thanks to green revolution and intensive agriculture. However, looking into the total area

under agriculture proportion achievements made in production and productivity so far is

far below the average when compared to other countries. One of the constraints attributed

was lack of knowledge input developed by agricultural universities, extension-centres

and businesses reaching the small and marginal farmers who made bulk of the nation’s

agriculture population. Hence farmers are deprived of latest available technology at right

time leading to considerable economic loss. Further, with lack of timely help a huge gap

is formed between farmer and agriculture scientist involved in developing need based

technologies. However, innovative Information Communication Technology (ICT), can

play a major role in bridging this gap. Now-a-days, many innovative agriculture

extension tools and farmer outreach programs are available to solve problems of Indian

farmers.

At present, the conventional agricultural extension and farmer-outreach programs

face major challenges such as quick and timely outreach, solutions tailored to needs of

individual farmers and cost effective outreach. To overcome these challenges, the ICT

which includes the internet and mobile networks has the potential to provide agro-

information services that are (i) affordable, (ii) relevant (timely and customized), (iii)

searchable and (iv) up to date. Though tele-centers are beginning to dot the Indian rural

landscape [1] [2], they lack agro-content in local language and quick delivery of the

information that is of immediate use to them.

Keeping these factors and the needs of Indian farmers in mind, a project 'Re-

designing the farmer-extension-agricultural research/education continuum in India with

ICT mediated Knowledge Management' has been implemented under the aegis of the

World Bank funded National Agricultural Innovation Project (NAIP) (Component-I) of

the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). The intent is to develop highly

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integrated knowledge management approaches between agricultural research, education

and extension services. The role of ICT to enhance food security and agricultural

livelihoods are widely recognized and discussed world over. This includes the use of

computers, internet, geographical information systems, mobile phones, as well as

traditional media such as radio or TV [4].

The NAIP’s approach to knowledge management involves the development of

highly integrated approaches between agricultural research and education sectors with

ICT for development area such as Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IIT-K), U.P.,

Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B), Maharashtra, Indian Institute of

Information Technology and Management, Thiruvanthapuram, Kerala (IIITM-K) as

consortium partners have worked together to organize a national pilot project. The main

project was divided into 6 sub-projects to the consortium partners. University of

Agricultural Sciences (UAS), Raichur, Karnataka is operating one of the sub-projects

entitled “Digitization of Agricultural Information for Knowledge Management System,

its delivery and Impact Assessment” with the following objectives:

Providing agricultural information content for incorporation into the knowledge

organization systems developed by IIT-Bombay, IIT- Kanpur and IIITM-Kerala.

Collaborate in developing information structure for semantic / ontological search

engines.

Strengthening and modernization of the selected KVKs / ARS to develop

knowledge interface between farmers and information resources at SAUs.

Delivery of the developed knowledge resources / tools through KVKs / ARS.

Assessment of the impact of the KM Resources / Tools on the functioning and

effectiveness of the KVKs /ARS.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

The NAIP-ICT project is operating at UAS, Dharwad/Raichur, Karnataka since

2008. The project is operating under consortium mode with International Crops Research

Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Patancheru, Hyderabad as consortium leader.

UAS, Dharwad/Raichur, Karnataka, Govind Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture and

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Technology (GBPUAT), Pantnagar, Uttaranchal, IIT-Kanpur, IIT-Bombay, IIITM-Kerala

and National Academy of Agricultural Research Management (NAARM),

Rajendranagar, Hyderabad as Consortium partners. Inturn, UAS Dharwad/Raichur

included agricultural scientists of various capacities for providing agricultural

information content and its incorporation into the knowledge organization systems and

Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs)/ Extension Education Units (EEUs) for the delivery of

developed knowledge resources/tools. Under this project, IIT-B, IIT-K and IIITM-K

individually developed knowledge organization systems such as aAQUA, Agropedia and

AKMIndia respectively.

aAQUA (almost All QUestions Answered) is an online multilingual, multimedia

Agricultural portal for disseminating information from and to the grassroots of the Indian

agricultural community [2]. In a typical aAQUA thread, a farmer submits a problem, and

an agriculture expert provides solutions. In this portal users can post a question on

aAQUA site through the web site (www.aaqua.org) or via mobile texting by registering

free of cost on the site. In this free portal apart from farmers anybody can browse the

forum. The registering profile includes details such as name, address, contact details,

crops grown etc. After registration and login, questions can be asked in a separate editor

in any of the five languages such as English, Hindi, Marathi, Kannada and Telugu

Assuming the question is clear and complete; agri-experts provide a detailed answer and

attach relevant images or documents, if necessary. If the question is incomplete, the agri-

expert asks the user to clarify the problem. To answer farmers’ queries, about 24 (11

from UAS, Dharwad and 13 from UAS, Raichur) scientists were involved from various

disciplines of Agricultural sciences (Crop production, Crop protection, Agricultural

Economics and Marketing) as experts. The recent development in aAQUA is sending

crop tips through short message service (SMS) to mobile phones. Nearly 10,000 farmers’

contact numbers were collected and categorized based on region and crop in order to send

region and crop specific agro-information tips. Apart from this various crop

recommendations, crop diagnosis via images in English and Kannada, audio clips and

video clips, etc. were uploaded to the digital library of aAQUA.

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IIT-Kanpur developed a portal called Agropedia (www.agropedia.in) with an

objective to make create repository of Agriculture Knowledge which contains universal

knowledge models and multilingual crop content with appropriate interfaces. These

universal knowledge models help in mapping the knowledge and tagging content of this

site so that the information is semantically searchable. Initially, agropedia started by

developing crop content on rice, wheat, chickpea, green pea, pigeon pea, sorghum,

groundnut, litchi, and sugarcane of the Indian agricultural domain with the help of UAS

Dharwad/Raichur and GBPUAT . The mandate of UAS, Dharwad/Raichur is to develop

region specific bilingual (Kannada and English) multimedia (text, images, graphic, audio

and video) content for rice, cotton, pigeonpea and chickpea and added to ‘Library

content’ of the ‘Extension material’. The extension material also contains other categories

such as ‘Crop Calendar’ and 'Do’s and Don'ts' on selected crops. UAS, Dharwad/Raichur

also utilized interaction space available in agropedia i.e., agrowiki and agroblog for

providing agricultural information and to comment on existing content or information.

AKMIndia (www.akmindia.net) portal developed by IIIM-K mainly focus web

based Decision Support Systems (DSS) such as Online Fertilizer Recommendation

System (OFRS), weather information and forecasting and soil nutrient information.

OFRS included fertilizer recommendations for 26 agricultural and horticultural crops

covering 10 agro-climatic zones of Karnataka state. The web enabled GIS map has a

weather location layer represented as points showing various talukas of all the 33 districts

of Karnataka State. On clicking these points, the weather conditions of the respective

talukas are pulled dynamically from fallingrain genomics service. Currently, the weather

information includes three parameters, viz. Temperature, Cloud Cover and Precipitation

(rainfall). The soil micro nutrients pertaining to Dharward district of Karnataka, such as

Boron, Zinc, Sulphur, Electrical Conductivity, pH, Potassium, Olsens Phosphorus and

Organic Carbon are represented as individual GIS layers that are coloured according to

low, medium and high availability levels. The soil micronutrients data was ICRISAT.

Results and Discussion

Typically, questions come from either farmers or from agri- professionals seeking

industrial, financial, or legal advice.

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1. aAQUA

In 13 months of its operation, aAQUA has 2500 members (Fig. 1) 1418 threads (Fig.

2) and 1729 posts. Of the total members registered from Karnataka State majority of them are

from Northern Districts of Karnataka. Most of the questions from farmers were related to

plant protection aspects of field and horticultural crops. The average response time for

answering a query was from 5 minutes to 24 hours. Right now farmers are posting

questions both in English and Kannada. Apart from farmers, the representatives of

farmers organizations, small and medium-sized agribusinesses, and larger agro-based

companies are also posting their queries. They are posting queries in crop, animal and

other forums. Since it is an open access portal any agricultural expert such as scientist,

Officers of the department, Progressive farmers, agri market executives etc. can provide

related agri-information on real time basis to the needy farmers.

Another major contribution of UAS, Dharwad/Raichur to aAQUA portal was

providing crop recommendations in bilingual languages. There were about 345 posts and

329 threads under UAS Dharwad/Raichur recommendation forum (Table 1). Around 250

audio clips on 27 crops is available which runs from 15 to 45 seconds concentrating on

management practices for pest and disease of crops.

aAQUA simultaneously addresses two major challenges in farmer outreach

programs – geographic reach and customized delivery [2]. In this context, now we have

started using mobile phone technology to reach large number of farmers. We have

maintained a database (name, address, mobile number and crops grown) of 10,000

farmers. As on date nearly 250 crop tips (Fig. 3) have been sent to 10,000 farmers. In

addition to the crop tips, information on allied agricultural subjects such as dairy,

fisheries and ongoing agriculture related activities in the university were also sent. There

is a significant impact in the farming community due to tips on agriculture and allied

subjects which could be assessed through the positive feed back from few of the farmers.

Infact, some of the farmers insisted to include weather forecasting information in the crop

tips. However, quantification of the benefit obtained in terms of economic yield needs to

be assessed through feed back survey. Apart from this the registered farmers are also

provided with contact number of the scientists whom they can contact over mobile

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phones to get answer to their specific problem. On an average each scientist gets around

5-6 phone calls from the farmers seeking the solution for their problems.

The library of aAQUA contains collection on crop diseases and pests called ‘Crop

Doctor’ which aims at providing crop diagnostics via images. The current collection

contains around 250 images of pest and disease of 19 crops covering cereals, pulses, oil

seeds, commercial crops etc. with detailed information on their symptoms, causal

organism, preventive and curative measures. Using this crop doctor any one can obtain

the management strategy against pest and disease incidence on crops. One of the new

features in aAQUA is expert bulletin boarding which the crop information will be

displayed continuously.

2. Agropedia

This is an another open access portal where in scientists, researchers, teachers,

students, extension workers, farmers, to traders and businessmen, can interact with each

other. Using state of the art practices and techniques of the semantic web, agropedia is a

platform where both specialists in the agriculture research and education domain can

make lasting contributions to the vast knowledge base [3]. UAS, Dhawrad/Raichur is

involved in contributing content towards the gyan dhara (certified content) as well as

janagyan (emergent knowledge). The bilingual (English and Kannada) crop content in

the form of text, images, graphs etc. on paddy, cotton, pigeonpea and chickpea were

added to gyan dhara (Table 2).

The semantic technology in agropedia was implemented using 'Knowledge

Models' which formed the basis of cataloging. Knowledge models, formulated by domain

experts have developed linkings among different concepts in agriculture through simple

relationships. These models enabled agropedia to produce a better search results set as all

the documents, images and videos come with appropriate live tags attached which make

them visible and searchable [3]. The multimedia content developed for mandate crops in

bilingual language is uploaded in Agropedia portal which can accessed by following link

http://agropedia.iitk.ac.in/?q=category/user-created-tags/clip&page=1 (Fig. 4a and 4b).

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3. AKMIndia

The portal mainly contains sub windows such as online fertilizer recommendation

systems (OFRS), Web GIS based weather information, Web GIS based soil nutrient

advisory system and online video channels. Till now there are 1243 farmers from 38

talukas of 17 districts in Karnataka are registered and around 1160 fertilizer

recommendation reports (Fig. 5) on 26 crops are generated. This indicates that OFRS is

becoming more popular among farming community. Another important feature of this

OFRS is that it also provides cost of the fertilizer (Fig. 5a) and method of application

(Fig. 5b).

Availability of dynamic weather information is very crucial for efficient planning

and decision-making in agriculture. Thus the web GIS technology on online weather

forecasting system facilitated dissemination of weather forecast for next 6 days upto

taluka level of Karnataka state (Fig. 6). This was achieved through virtually integrating

dynamic information from multiple sources. This has facilitated real time decision

support systems to crop advisory and safety.

Through the Web GIS based soil nutrient advisory system, the farmers and

extension officers are getting detailed information on micro level scientific soil properties

of Dharward district (Fig. 7) based on which location specific fertilizer recommendation

can be generated.

4. Social Networking

The efficiency of the portals developed such as aAQUA , Agropedia and

AKMIndia can be improved through creating awareness in the scientists, Officers of the

departments and outreaching the farming community with the help of extension services

like university KVKs and EEUs, RSKs, NGOs and progressive farmers through social

networking.

Training/workshop is one essential area, without which these services could be

really ineffective. Keeping this in mind, UAS, Dharwad/Raichur signed a Memorandum

of Understanding (MOU) with Indian Society of Agricultural Information Technology

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(INSAIT), Dharwad to provide consultancy services to progressive farmers, NGOs,

Department officers etc. So far UAS Dharwad/Raichur in association with IITs has

conducted 44 workshops and hands on training on use of above portals. The feed back of

the trainees on the use of three portals can be accessed in

http://aaqua.persistent.co.in/aaqua/forum/listthreads?forum=362.

With all these said and done, the project has long way to go in fulfilling the

primary objectives of brining agricultural information to the doorstep of each and every

farmer and revolutionizing agriculture through ICT.

REFERENCES:

[1] A. Bahuman, S. Inamdar, R. Swami and K. Ramamritham, “Robust Network for

Rural Areas: study of two of Nlogue’s ICT projects (in Maharashtra) and a compilation

of the weakest links in their services and IIT Bombay’s efforts in addressing them.”

http://www.dil.iitb.ac.in/docs/Interim%20Report-Feb%202005-IITBombay. pdf

[2] K. Ramamritham, A. Bahuman, S. Duttagupta, C. Bahuman, S. Balasundaram,

Innovative ICT Tools for Information Provision in Agricultural Extension (December

2005) http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~krithi/papers/ICTD2006.pdf

[3] R. Sarkar, T. V. Prabhakar and M. B. Bhatia, Agropedia Revolutionizing Indian

Agriculture http://www.i4donline.net/articles/current-article.asp?

Title=Agropedia&articleid=2358&typ=Features

[4] S. Jac, B. Wietse and N. Frans, 2007, How ICT can make a difference in agricultural

livelihoods. International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD).

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Fig. 1: Pie chart showing the number of online registered members from different states

in aAQUA portal

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Fig. 2: Pie chart showing the number of questions from different states in aAQUA portal

Fig 3: Sample crop tip in mobile phone

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Fig. 4a: Online video clip on pest management in Agropedia portal (Kannada)

Fig. 4b: Online video clip on machine transplanting in paddy in Agropedia portal (English)

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Fig.5: A sample OFRS report generated in AKMIndia portal

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(a)

(b)

Fig.5a and 5b: Showing the cost of the fertilizer as well as method of application

Fig 6: Web GIS based weather information for Karnataka state

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Fig 7: Web GIS based soil nutrient information of Dharwad district

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Table 1: List showing the total number of threads and posts under UAS

Dharwad/Raichur recommendations forum in aAQUA portal

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Table 2: Showing the total number of posts from UAS Dharwad/Raichur to Agropedia

portal

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