e Pest Surveillance and pest management – Department of Agriculture & Farmers Empowerment, Odisha

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Surveillance Advisory on insects and Pests Management to improve crop produce

Problem:
The major crops in the state of Odisha like Paddy, Mung, Biri, Arhar, Groundnut and Mustard etc. which are damaged by pests every year. These pest attacks are a major issue causing financial loss and crop loss to farmers. The absence of a modern pest monitoring system that can check the spread of the pest and the disease and minimize the losses occurring to the crops and to build such capacity in staff to use technological tools such as a GPS enabled mobile app was difficult. And the Identification of disease and pest symptoms and taking proper remedial action was a complex task

Solution:
The new system is a secure, comprehensive web-based software for the Directorate of Agriculture & Food Production and for that weekly five days mandatory surveillance in random and fixed plots in the fields to ascertain the incidence of disease and pest occurrence. For that Capturing the image of the pest and the extent  of damage to the crop through the ePest Mobile App for easy identification and uploading the pest surveillance data in the mobile app on a daily basis is must. Then advisory is sent to the farmers in their regional language using SMS to warn them about the danger of pest attacks

Outcomes:
Around 28 lakh farmers have benefited from this project and 30 lakh ha of crop area has been brought under ePest surveillance. The crop losses have been brought to a standstill due to continuous monitoring and surveillance. This ePest system has brought transparency in the process of crop surveillance and reduced costs for the department. Earlier, there was no mobile app in the pre-deployment stage, a system has been created for capturing and verification of pest attack data. This project exhibits potential for replication across states to safeguard crops and protect the economic and livelihood prospects of farmers and the verification of location with GPS coordinates has improved the accuracy of warning of pest attacks, This has benefited farmers and the department in a huge way

Challenges
Field staffs were reluctant to use the Mobile App for pest surveillance because of GPS enabled.

Innovations
The innovation which is involved here is the Capturing the image of pest including the GPS coordinates.

Opportunity
The project can be replicated in other states if it targets and explores more outcomes and innovations required. The project has been implemented in all the districts of the State and the policy makers should look for more innovations required for its efficacy. The other states should look into the outcome of this project and they should also start such projects in their respective states so that agricultural productivity can be improved.

For more information, please contact:
Dr M Muthu Kumar, Director Agriculture & Food Production, Odisha at diragri.or@nic.in

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