In the modern world, various technologies permeate every facet of life, including agriculture. Many organizations strive to foster and develop new innovations to assist farmers, as they grapple with age-old and contemporary challenges. These range from unpredictable crop yields due to natural disasters and droughts to plant diseases.
"Rice Disease Bot" stands as a testament to such innovation, born out of collaboration among organizations aiming to serve the agricultural community. This tool aids farmers in diagnosing rice diseases using photographs.
"Rice Disease Bot" is a chatbot system utilizing Artificial Intelligence (AI) for disease diagnosis, conveniently accessed via the LINE application, a platform already familiar to most farmers. When farmers detect any anomalies in their rice crops, they can instantly feed data into the system. By capturing images of the disease symptoms on the rice plants and sending them to the chatbot, the system forwards the images to the cloud for AI analysis via deep learning techniques.
Once the results are generated, the system delivers the disease analysis along with appropriate control measures and reports back to the farmer within 3 to 5 seconds. This swift process saves farmers time and costs associated with disease diagnosis in their fields, allowing them to select suitable treatments in alignment with the plant's symptoms. This method reduces the expense of chemical use and elevates the yield of Thai rice crops.
Currently, "Rice Disease Bot" offers services for diagnosing ten major rice diseases in Thailand, namely blast disease, brown spot disease, bacterial leaf streak, bacterial leaf blight, sheath blight, dirty panicle, false smut, brown ring patch, kernel smut, and rice dwarf.
This tool has been opened for trial by farmers, local rice centers, departments under the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, and the private sector through "Provincial Rice Disease Bot Groups". Each group has rice disease experts who review the diagnostic results and assist in addressing queries and providing additional advice to farmers.
Besides rice diseases, which significantly impact the quantity of each crop yield, farmers face numerous other challenges such as pests and nutrient deficiency. Thus, this platform is continuously being developed to cover a wider array of farmers' needs.
Source: National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA)
Tel. +66 2564 7000
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