Pannai , a new mobile app for pest-disease warning, developed by the M.S.Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) with support from Oracle and technical inputs from Tamil Nadu Agriculture University, was launched here on Tuesday.
Estimates have shown that farmers lose up to 40% of their crop to pest-disease attacks.
Initially, the project is being rolled out in six villages, covering around 3,000 farmers and indirectly another 10,000 in the Vedaranyam block of Nagapattinam district.
As a unique feature, it contains farm-level digitised land records and automatic weather stations.
Minister for Revenue R. B. Udayakumar and Minister for Agriculture R. Doraikannu launched the app in the presence of MSSRF founder and agricultural scientist M.S.Swaminathan at the Foundation.
The app — Pest-disease Advance Notification and Need–based Agriculture Information — PANNAI provides advisories, market information and farm-specific weather advisories. It also uses information from the Uzhavan app of the State government.
Mr. Swaminathan said digital technology was very important to support small farmers and applauded the efforts made by this project.
Mr. Udayakumar said the app should be scaled up so that agriculture and technology would work together. Mr. Doraikannu appealed to farmers to use Pannai and Uzhavan apps.
MSSRF executive director Anil Kumar and Oracle representative Ramesh Venkatachari spoke.
