Computer engineering students from the Vivekanand Education
Society’s Institute of Technology (VESIT) have developed an app named
‘Agronomists’ which will educate farmers on growing medicinal and aroma crops
The app has also won the a
winner’s prize money of Rs 1 lakh in the Smart India Hackathon 2018 held at the
NCL (National Chemical Laboratory) in Pune.
The team of enthusiastic
students came up with the idea as they were looking for a solution to unite the
farmers, entrepreneurs, industrialists and scientists to fuel the growth of
medicinal and aroma industry. The multilingual app has an English language
interface and the integration of Marathi and Hindi interfaces are underway.
Sanket Paratkar, leader of the team of developers said, “A
farmer knows how to grow normal crops like wheat, jowar, bajri, cotton or even
sugar cane etc. But most of them don’t know how to grow medicinal or aromatic
plants. Planting cash crops have led to farmers losing money which has led to
bankruptcy. India has also seen a rise in farmer suicides. Hence, I feel that
medicinal and aromatic plants can be a solution. There are a lot of demands of
these crops from pharmaceutical companies and medicine companies. Hence we
decided to make this app.”
Answers to questions on
the suitable climate, the type of agricultural land, the market where the crops
can be sold will be made available to the farmers with the help of scientists
and experts from the government.
The app will also have a
chatroom segment where the buyers and sellers will be able to communicate with
each other.
Prof. Manisha Gahirwal,
mentor of the team, said, “The best part is that we are providing the market
trends of the last five years.”
