Photo by E. Sohn
Aug. 11, 2004
Pest Control Software
PESDOC: Farmer-Friendly Software for Pest Diagnosis of Crops
Kanishka Raajkumar, 14, Coimbatore, India
Intel Achievement Award, Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, 2004
Category: Computers
PESDOC is aimed at helping farmers in remote rural areas to seek effective solutions for pest control in crops (at present, cotton, sugarcane, and rice) by providing software that can analyze symptoms, identify pests, and suggest remedial measures. The system currently covers 30 pests (about 10 pests per crop).
PESDOC was created in Visual Prolog 5.2. The knowledge acquisition module was created in Visual Basic 6.0. The animation and audio were developed using Macromedia Flash 5.0 and the Windows Sound Recorder utility, respectively.
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| Photo by E. Sohn |
The program is in the form of a desktop pest expert with which a farmer, who has no formal training in pest control, interacts by responding to a set of queries. The software employs rule-based reasoning. Knowledge was acquired from texts and human experts in the field of path pathology and entomology. A special interface provides for updating the knowledge base. Audio and video files, developed in the local language for the benefit of rural farmers, illustrate pest management procedures.
When tested, PESDOC performed as well as human experts within its narrow domain. It can be concluded that PESDOC is able to provide effective diagnosis of pest damage and, hence, suggest treatment procedures to farmers. It can also help plant experts in diagnosis.
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