Agriculture: Farm Extension Ma

A mobile application in agriculture containing information on 100 crops.

Farm Extension Manager (FEM@Mobile) is a mobile application developed in the field of agriculture. It contains information on 100 essential crops of Kerala. The application is made available in both English and Malayalam languages. It works in its full features in online mode, and also work in offline mode. The application takes care of the needs of both small, marginal and big farmers.

There are ten different categories of information covered under the tool. The broad areas of information are crop cultivation, plant protection, organic inputs, agrochemicals, agricultural quiz, video gallery, farm posters, expert support, contact directory and app info.

The crops are categorized based on broad groups like spices, vegetables, medicinal plants etc. The crop production aspects cover information on planting, variety, fertilizer, aftercare and harvest.

The button on planting operations will give information on seed material, spacing, planting time, method of planting etc. Information on around 800 recommended varieties, are included under the variety section.

Around 300 fertilizer recommendations, are presented in straight fertilizer format, and unit area basis and per plant basis. Further, the fertilizer information button will make precise information on how much fertilizer to be applied, when and how.

The plant protection part covers symptom and control of over 500 insect pests, 700 plant diseases and 1100 deficiency disorders. The control aspect gives equal emphasis on organic and inorganic methods.

A detailed information on, topics like different organic and inorganic fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides and insecticides, are included. The expert support link helps the users to send field photos directly to the scientists.

The online agricultural quiz is a new addition in the mobile app. It has two rounds; the descriptive round and picture round. The picture round help to learn about many disease and pest through photos.

The video gallery has a collection of many short videos that help learning easy. The videos are classified well to make easy selection. The different videos produced by KAU scientists and available in youtube, are linked through playlisting.

The farm posters also help in getting correct information with photos. The contact directory of agricultural extension workers and details of the app also finds a place in the mobile app.

The mobile app is made available free for download. The speciality of the tool is its simplicity. The well-structured navigation path makes information retrieval easy. The small sentences and paragraphs also enhances the readability of the content materials.

This work is an extension of the concept of farm extension manager website. A group of scientists of Kerala Agricultural University (KAU) developed the mobile app. The Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Government of Kerala, and the State Planning Board, Kerala funded the project.