The Two faculty of Professor JayashankerTelangana State Agricultural University, Rajendranagar, Hyderabad are leaving to Australia from 16thAugust for about two months to study and validate Mobile “GyanKisan”App in farmer’s field condition of Western Sydney University (WSU). This visit is a collaborative activity as a part of tripartite MoU signed between WSU Australia, River bridge ventures (RV), India and PJTSAU. The development of this App is to explore the scientific expertise in Agriculture domain and its capabilities that can be effectively combined to enhance and transform agriculture extension services. The mobile App is under pilot testing at 4 test beds (villages) namely Vallapuram, Thallapusalapalle, Nandivaddeman and Cherlabuthkur and orientation was given to 200 hundred farmers (fifty each) from these 4 selected villages. The baseline survey and data of farmers was collected with the help of scientists of three KVKs- Wyra, Malyal, Palem and one DAATTC –Karimnagar besides the help taken from AEO’s of Agriculture department and Change Gurus (Representative of river bridge venture) by using interview schedule. It is also planned to test this App at one of the FPO at Veldandamandal of nagarkurnool district with the help of SERP, Telangana shortly.
The crop husbandry data of crops like Paddy, Maize, Groundnut, Cotton, Castor, Redgram, Chillies, Tomato, Bhendi, Brinjal are uploaded in the App for the benefit of farmers. The farmer wise crop calendar is created in the App along with the Pest/Disease pictures, Weather updates, market price forecasting of major crops and a toll free phone number is provided for the benefit of farmers to raise their queries.
The pilot testing is being done in the selected villages of Telangana State and data collected from farmers and will be analyzed with the help of WSU Australia during their visit. This visit will enable the scientists to explore the possibilities of refinement and up scaling the “GyanKisan” App by studying its implementation and performance at farmer’s level.
Dr. V. Praveen Rao, Honorable Vice Chancellor of PJTSAU expressed that the University has collaboration with many agricultural universities across the countries like USA, Germany, Canada, Vietnam, Philippines, Australia besides 26 MoUs with national institutes, Private input companies, Agril. Universities, Horticultural Universities, IITs and Corporate. And, as a part of MoU’s many faculty and students of PJTSAU are visiting these countries under faculty exchange programme for research, education and training. Further, as the University at present is ranked as one of the best in the country many top Universities in India and abroad be it in the field of education, research, extension and training are coming forward to seek collaboration with PJTSAU.
