02-07-2025
India plans AI-driven pest detection roll-out to help farmers, say agriculture secy
New Delhi: India plans a nationwide roll-out of its artificial intelligence (AI)-driven pest detection scheme to help farmers, agriculture and farmers welfare secretary Devesh Chaturvedi told Mint.
The National Pest Surveillance System (NPSS), launched on 15 August, 2024, has seen a limited roll out for around 30,000 users so far, including farmers and extension workers.
But it will ultimately be made available for around 146 million farmers. The scheme uses images of pests to help farmers mitigate pest attacks and reduce crop losses.
The development assumes significance given that average crop losses are estimated at 10-35% annually due to weeds, pests and disease.
Losses due to pest and diseases are not static and vary from year to year depending on temperature, humidity, rainfall, susceptibility of the crop variety and agronomic practices.
Chaturvedi said NPSS currently covers pests and diseases in 61 crops and will be expanded.
"We plan to bring more farmers and extension workers under its ambit taking it to 50,000 users initially. Further, the idea is to extend it to all farmers," added Chaturvedi.
The agriculture ministry plans to take the technology to the farmers so that they can communicate with experts directly by uploading images of affected crops or pests.
Agriculture contributes around 18% to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 46% of the country's population is engaged in it. Any disturbance in the sector pertaining to productivity not only acts as a stumbling block in taming inflation but also affects the farmer' livelihood.
"AI's computer vision model has the capability to identify and differentiate between farmer-friendly insects and pests. The latter are harmful to crop growth which eventually adversely affects farmers income. Once the pest is detected, these models can be clubbed with pest management advisories, which can reduce indiscriminate use of pesticides, and can help in overall sustainability of environment and enhanced incomes of the farmer, said J.P. Tripathi, Director of Agriculture Programmes at Wadhwani AI. Established in 2018, Wadhwani AI, is a non profit organisation that focuses on AI applications.
For the year 2025-26, the government has set a record food grain production target of 354.64 million tonnes (MT), up 3.8% from 341.55 MT in 2024-25. The government is banking on a good monsoon, predicted to be above normal at 106% of the long period average.
The government is also using AI in other applications to empower farmers. It has created the Kisan e-Mitra chatbot, a voice-based AI-powered chatbot, developed to assist farmers with responses to their queries on PM Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme.
Started with five languages in September 2023, the solution now supports 11 regional languages and is also evolving to assist with other government programmes.
The system accepts audio and text queries in the farmer's desired language, translate them, and provide responses in the local language in both text and audio formats.
"Since its inception, over 9.3 million queries have been answered," added Chaturvedi.
The chatbot operates on a self-learning AI model. The AI chatbot can respond to inquiries about the progress of their applications, payment information, ineligibility status, and any updates or modifications made to the programme.
