A Sowing App, developed by Microsoft and International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in partnership with the Government of AP, contributed to an average increase of 30 per cent in yield per acre.
The app was launched as a pilot project in Devanakonda mandal of Kurnool district in June 2016.
The app was developed to help small farmers cultivating groundnut achieve optimal harvests by advising them on the best time to sow, soil and other indicators.
The results of the project were announced at a panel discussion during the two-day 20th National Conference on E-Governance, which concluded here on Tuesday.
The personalised village advisory dashboard provides important insights into soil health, recommends fertiliser, and forecasts seven-day weather.
During the pilot project, farmers were sent 10 sowing advisories from June 10 via SMS in Telugu, comprising essential information such as seed treatment, optimum sowing depth, preventive weed management, land preparation, harvesting, shade drying, and storage.
The data could be integrated with other data collected from the Rythu Kosam project to build predictive models for the farmers.
“I have three acres of land and sowed groundnut on June 25, 2016, based on the recommendations of ICRISAT. When the crops were harvested on October 28, the yield was about 1.35 tonne per hectare. The advisories on land preparation, sowing, and need-based plant protection proved to be very useful to me,” said G. Chinnavenkateswarlu, a farmer of Bairavanikunta.
“Registered farmers did the sowing in the last week of June and managed the crop as per the advisories of ICRISAT and Microsoft. Farmers who sowed in the first week of June got meagre yields due to long dry spell in August. Registered farmers, who sowed in the last week of June and first week of July, and followed the advisories got better yields,” said C. Madhusudhana, president, Chaitanya Youth Association and Watershed Community Association, Devanakonda.
“The applicability of Intelligent Cloud is a significant start for digital agriculture, and we hope more governments and stakeholders would come forward to reap the benefits of this innovation,” said Managing Director, Microsoft India (R&D) Pvt. Ltd., Anil Bhansali.
“We look forward to continuing our partnership with Microsoft to enhance the incomes and improve the lives of small farmers, besides giving a boost to our digital agriculture initiative,” said Director-General of ICRISAT David Begvinson.
