App to be built soon for assessment of harmful pests and diseases in rice cultivation

The Plant Protection Department (PPD) and Viettel solutions are urgently building an assessment app for pests and diseases, with a first pilot on rice cultivation in An Giang Province in the next three months.

Smartphones and apps are increasingly convenient, helping farmers in many stages of production. Photo: TL.

Artificial intelligence identifies pests

The PPD and the Viettel Enterprise Solutions Corporation (Viettel solutions), the An Giang Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, and An Giang Department of Information and Communications, on June 25, continued to have an online meeting to discuss the implementation of a project on experimenting and developing a software app for pest control in crops with a pilot on rice in An Giang Province.

Previously, following a direction of the leaders of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the Ministry of Information and Communications, on June 21, the PPD and Viettel solutions also had a meeting to promote the 4.0 technology application in plant protection with the immediate target to pilot the development and application of software for assessing harmful species in rice cultivation in An Giang Province.

At the meeting on June 25, the parties continued to discuss options and detailed plans for the development and design of the software, in which three major issues were targeted: Building a sufficiently large and diverse database; creating the software to be easy to understand, accessible and practice; ensuring effective interaction and instructions for people to apply correctly.

The PPD and experts of Viettel solutions agreed that the pest assessing apps will be built and designed to be used on smartphones to ensure that farmers can most easily use them by assessing through images and search for the most accurate, effective and timely pest control measures.

Accordingly, the PPD and its branch units will soon provide a database system for Viettel solutions about harmful species with their characteristics in causing diseases and typical symptoms in each stage of development, as well as data on control measures. By taking photos of them in the field and through the app on their smartphones, farmers will identify what kinds of the insect is. From the app's database, farmers will be provided with the necessary information so that they can choose the most effective measures to prevent.

In addition, the app will also provide search tools and integrated pest management measures, the composition of harmful species on each plant, identification images, information on morphological and biological characteristics, harmful behavior, and specific control measures.

The app will also be upgraded with a virtual assistant to answer farmers' questions about unknown issues, helping to answer common situations in the field.

To optimize the applicability, convenience, and be ease for any citizen can use it, Viettel will also aim to build a data search function that can also answer questions and suggest solutions through a virtual assistant which can recognize the accurate voice of the users by supporting a variety of Northern, Central, Southern accents.

Representatives of Viettel solutions said to do that, they wanted the agencies of the PPD and An Giang Province to provide statistics to clearly identify the farmers’ needs as well as the difficulties they are now facing in using the app. They also wanted to know about the rate of using 3G, 4G services and the quality of smartphones among farmers so that to ensure the feasibility of the app.

Databases play an important role

Mr. Truong Tien Tho, Deputy Director of An Giang Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, raised concerns and recommendations when building and launching the app saying it should ensure factors that not only help identify but also provide early predictive data so that farmers can take proactive measures to control pests and diseases.

According to Mr. Tho, early detection and prevention will reduce costs much more than treatment. Actually, he said, when farmers could see with their eyes and take sharp pictures for apps to identify the pests, the disease might have been already at an outbreak stage, the prevention efficiency would not be as high.

Therefore, when building the app, Viettel's experts should take into account the optimization solutions so that the app can have more functions of warning and suggesting preventive measures. When it gives information about disease phenomenon and density, it is also possible to make timely predictions, forecasts, and warn farmers about the risk of pests and diseases right away for people.

Moreover, to be effective in practical use, the app’s information processing speed must be fast (just in seconds). Agricultural promotion officials and authority staff, especially those at grassroots levels must be trained and guided in using it because they are the core force to help step by step standardize images of pests and diseases as a database for the app. At the same time, they can support farmers to operate the app on their smartphones before making it usable among la large number of people.

In addition, it must be necessary to have guidelines and instructions so that app users can know how to use smartphones to take photos in the best way, making it convenient for identifying pests and diseases at a certain time and location. 

Mr, Huynh Tan Dat, Deputy Director of the PPD, said that in the coming time, the DPP will continue to work closely with Viettel solutions to clearly evaluate the infrastructure of each party and strengthen the system of full-time staff in localities to assign detailed works for them.

The PPD will provide sufficient data on expertise for Viettel to soon complete the software, build and design the app in the shortest time.

The two sides will jointly focus on building a rich, accurate and complete data store for the app.

The specializing staff of the two units will collect, classify and label in an accurate, scientific, and most convenient way for searching, identifying, and giving treatment and prevention measures for each individual harmful species and diseases.

Mr. Dat also suggested that Viettel should have the required specifications on quality, quantity and form of images for the process of building the app.

According to him, these will be very important bases to set guidelines for helping farmers take the right photos, meeting quality requirements of the apps, making the synchronization between the database and the actual image so that it can be easier, more convenient and accurate for users.