The Crop Darpan app, a crop diagnostic tool,  which is being developed by researchers at  IT for Agricultural Research center (ITARD) headed by Prof. P Krishna Reddy will be used by farmers through the department of agriculture, Telangana. After a lot of  field tests and demonstrations for over two years,  the department of agriculture Telangana, has taken a decision to encourage farmers to use the Crop Darpan app. The order has been issued by the Special Commissioner of Agriculture, Dept. of Agriculture, Telangana. The Crop Darpan  app was developed in collaboration with Prof. Jayashankar, Telangana State Agricultural University.

About 20 years ago, in 2002 the effort to build a system to help farmers to provide personalised scientific advice began.  Prof. Reddy faced several ups and downs in his efforts. As a part of the struggle to build a workable system, after developing eSagu, location-specific eSagu, Prof. Reddy and his research team could come-up with Crop Darpan, which is somewhat usable  by farmers. (Here, Sagu means Agriculture or farming in Telugu language.) They developed a system framework and developed the first version of a usable product – Crop Darpan app,  for rice and cotton crops. The framework  can be extended to all crops of India in all languages. The Crop Darpan app will assist farmers with problems identified with crop development, bugs, bacterial infection, parasitic diseases, and nutritional insufficiency. 

A virtual training session was conducted on 26 August for District Agricultural Officers and Mandal Agricultural officers, covering fifty percent of districts in Telangana for Cotton and Rice crops. They in turn train/encourage the farmers.

To know about Crop Darpan visit – https://blogs.iiit.ac.in/crop-darpan/

August 2023