BIOINFORMATICA, 2012 Open access Journal for areas of Life Sciences and related Informatics Sciences Volume 1, Issue 1
BITVillage: An Integrated Village information system (IVIS) based on microfarm Planning system using Bioinformatics approach
Vishal A Mevada, Brijal D Parekh, Rajesh K Patel The Virtual Institute of Bioinformatics, BITVIRTUAL, HNGU, Patan- 384265 Department of Life Sciences, Hemchandracharya North Gujarat University, Patan- 384265
[email protected]
Abstract Integrated Village information system is combination of several well managed database management system, which generate producible information to improve yield of crop production. Currently there are lots of data available but not easily available and understandable. To simplify such data we need some tools and IVIS system. BITVillage, a small village Rajpara near Rajkot, Gujarat is one of novel IVIS based system of India. It includes 8 different components for IVIS, (1) Database of Soil analysis report of each farm of last three years, (2) GIS based digitization of village, (3) Weather report database and distribution of current data, (4) Open source Agricultural wiki system for crop and disease, generated and maintained by experts in Local language, (5) Microfarm planning based Fertilizer and cost calculators, (6) Decision support system, (7) Commodity prices and (8) Use of SMS as communication technology to reach in every hand in Local Language (Gujarati). Most information works on English language, which cannot easily understandable by farmers and local people of India. So, this system works totally on local language to make maximum use of the information by farmers and local people. Keywords: BITVillage; Integrated village information system(IVIS); Decision support system (DSS);Agriculture microfarm planning
Introduction Agriculture is the key motor of Indian economy, which supports livelihood and subsistence of the largest number of people worldwide. It is a science; art and industry of managing the growth of plants and animals for make use of by humans. Planning of Integrated village information system is widely accepted as a way to handle complex problems of resource allocation at regional level. In order to provide a more effective and meaningful direction for better planning and development, necessary support of the information has become essential.[1] We need some excellent tools and management system like, IVIS to improve crop production.[2] Integrated Village information system is well managed database driven system with output, which will help researcher to be used for several aspects like, e.g.: Decision support system[3], automation of farm,[4] microfarm planning system, crop prediction and Fertilizer usage calculator. It is a portal like system which helps the farmers for their crop improvement and also planning
of cost for the future plantation. It also assists farmers and decision-makers to generate various eco-socio economic views/scenarios for identifying villages for rural watershed management schemes.[5] Saravan et al., recognized the importance of building farm information systems for the Thai sugar industry.[6] The emergence of Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System as a powerful tool for spatial analysis and storage has alleviated the problem by computerization of the spatial data.[7-8] To strengthening, the system need constant input of field data, site-specific management involving the mapping of yield variability and the identification of limiting factors by combined analysis of soil, nutrients, fertilizers and weather information along with field data and remotely sensed data.[9] Sometimes it is said that management is not important on small farms. But, Japan's method of improving agriculture based on the principles of farm management clearly demonstrates that a small farm by itself should not be a hindrance to increased
BIOINFORMATICA, 2012 Open access Journal for areas of Life Sciences and related Informatics Sciences Volume 1, Issue 1
production & higher income.[10] In the case of small farms, farm organization cannot be changed as much as on a large farm, but the choice in respect of farm practices & methods of production, cropping intensity, etc. offer worthwhile alternatives. A Chinese proverb is very appropriate to quote:"Although the size of a sparrow is small, yet it is physiologically as perfect as a big bird". The emerging paradigm of Semantic Web and mindmap[11] offer unprecedented new opportunities in agricultural information organization.[12] MediaWiki-like content management systems, supplemented by blogs and online social networks, are likely to make significant contribution to agricultural research, education and extension are practiced in the developing countries.[13] In present days, Information and communication technology has trespassed all barriers of race, religion, culture and countries. A visions how communication networking could help us to grow more with guarantees for Agriculture farming.[14] A warning system, where up-to-date and local agricultural information is communicated by SMS was described by Jensen and Thysen. [15] Materials and Method
backend with Gujarati as a local language. Currently, it contains past three years data of farmer including Soil analysis, Water availability, past crops and their yields, Weather reports, fertilizer accumulation. The information was directly accessed from the internet as a report form for particular farm number. Figure: .2 D. Wiki Based Semantic Web Content Development in Local Language
Agriculture wiki in Gujarati was created using Media wiki with scientific data generated from agriculture universities of Gujarat. Incorporation of mind map provides Semantic web surfing mode to easy surfing of website by farmers. Figure: . 5 E. Development of microfarm planning system and prediction tools
The microfarm planning system was developed to keen observation of the micro level identification of growth limiting factors in fields. The system was developed to calculate approximate cost and fertilizers usage using Cost and Fertilizer calculator like predictive tools, which are depended on statistical analysis and past data It was totally depended on Soil report, Market price and usage of fertilizers. It was also provided recommendation of particular fertilizers to users. Figure: .3
A. Study area and Data Collection
The study area was a Village Rajpara, near to Rajkot, with GPS location Latitude: 22.112403 Longitude: 70.882639, It was selected on the basis of the feasibility of available past data of Crops, yield and fertilizers. The Data collection was carried out by personal survey of farmers. List of survey number and toposheet were collected from the panchayat to reduce data redundancy. Figure: .1
F. Prediction Model Generation
Digitization of village and predictive model was developed using ARC GIS software. The database of IVIS was added to arc GIS as a backend dataset, which was implemented as a predictive model. Such models are also used for the digitization of whole village into pixel level details on the satellite images.
B. Soil analysis, Crops policies and yield
Soil analysis of the past 2 years was obtained from farmers by Soil health cards provided by the Gujarat Government and current year analysis was carried out in our Laboratory. It includes Physical and chemical parameters. e.g.: N, P, K, C, electric conductivity, etc. Past details of crop and yield was obtained from personal survey.
G. Commodity, Weather and Sms System
Short Messaging Service (SMS) provides better broadcasting of information all over India. The commodity, weather and other related information was sent via SMS to each member in local language. Currently, our commodity module fetches the details from local APMC and also its status in all over India. Figure: . 4
C. Information System Development
Database of Bit Village Information system, for storing and analysis of data was created in PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) as frontend and MySQL as
Results and Discussion Village information system was feed with data from the local personal survey and government
BIOINFORMATICA, 2012 Open access Journal for areas of Life Sciences and related Informatics Sciences Volume 1, Issue 1
organizations. To improve performance of system, it was made in PHP and MySQL server. System generates specific report to each farm number. Micro farm planning system was created for farmers for decision support for individual agriculture practice. The logic for calculation was based upon the agriculture university standard recommendation. Micro farm planning system was distributed in two parts, 1: Cost calculator and 2: Fertilizer calculator. Cost calculator was predict total cost to the farmer, whereas the fertilizer calculator guides the farmers for use of optimum fertilizer before application. Nowadays, agricultural practice is sound like a corporate filed; need to calculate the each and every purchase and selling to maximize the profit. Profitable protocol set up by money calculator depending on inputs of the related crops and input data. Similarly, current fertilizer treatment are given on random way or some time based on observation of crops health and growth, but actual concentration and deficiency of micro nutrient and macro nutrient present on soil is not concern by farmer. Consequently, even though applying the fertilizer, maximum production cannot be gained. To solve such common problem, Microfarming system provides scientific support based upon the soil heath for application of fertilizer. The predicted value had been checked for year for testing the prediction level of the system. The Geographical information system was fundamental part of GIS based village information system. Rajpara Village map was digitized with GIS information using arc GIS. Village information data were also integrated in the digitized map. This was accessed from the local panchat of village. Wiki based agriculture wiki system (Figure: . 5) was one of the best information resource systems for farmers created for easy understanding in Gujarati language. More than 250 wikipages were created. The system was based on the Wikipedia like concept by using the Mediawiki CMS. The interactive user friendly design on the basis of mindmap works excellent to use by farmers for their understanding. Similar agro wiki systems are available on web by many service providers but this would be the probably first approach to create such wiki pages in local language to fulfill the local need. Weather and commodity detail was fetch from weather station and Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) of Rajkot and also from Agrisnet, which was automatically updated on the BITVillage site. This information automatically forwarded to all member via SMS. SMS in local
language work perfectly to easy understanding by farmers. The combination of above system generates unbeatable IVIS in India with such high numbered system integration. The wiki system was set to open access and self-improved mode by experts of agriculture fields. Microfarm planning provides very nice calculations for cost prediction and fertilizer input details. The system is observed and maintained by our team. This system is model for creation of district and state level information system. By combining such small scale IVIS the huge output and prediction precision can be improved upon feed of the large dataset. Such large dataset reduces standard deviation and that way provide more accurate results. We had created this system in open access based VIS, which enables it to disseminate knowledge into maximum amount of users and farmers. (http://bitvillage.ilifeacademy.org) Conclusion Use of ICT and scientific information in agriculture field level is very less in India compared to other countries. BITVillage (IVIS) can be used as a prototype to develop Village Information system in state and country. Such application systems can be effectively used by less literate farmer as the support is provided in Local language Gujarati. Including Weather report, VIS, Commodity, Experts suggestions etc. SMS support was more effective to share information with farmer in fields not having computer and Internet services. Microfarm planning system was excellent prediction model having tools like, Cost and fertilizer calculator etc. BITVillage proves real definition of IVIS by its unconquerable applications and reproducibility for farmers of India. References [1] H. Brožová, Agric. Econ. – Czech, 54, (2008) 11: 546–553 [2] P. Krishna Reddy & R. Ankaiah, Current Science, (2005) 88 [3] M. S. Seidl & W. D. Batchelor, Applied Engineering in Agriculture, (2001), 17(5): 721–728 [4] R. Earl et al., Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, (2000) 25(1-2): 107- 120 [5] D. Schroder et al., Precision Agriculture. (1997) 2: 821-826 [6] R. Saravanan et al., Proceedings of ISSCT. (2005) 25. [7] R. Kingston et al., Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, (2000) 24:109-125 [8] S. Daberkow et al,. AAEA meetings, (2003) [9] C. Gilberto et al., Computers & Graphics, (1996) 20(3): 395403 [10] http://www.krishiworld.com/html/farm_management2.html [11] M. J. Bates, New Review of Information Behaviour Research, (2002) 3: 1-15
BIOINFORMATICA, 2012 Open access Journal for areas of Life Sciences and related Informatics Sciences Volume 1, Issue 1
[12] T. Berners-Lee et al., Scientific American (2002) 34-43 [13] S. Hassan et al., African Journal of Agricultural Research, (2010) 5(24): 3500-3513 [14] A. Gachet & P. Haettenschwiler, Journal of Decision Systems, (2003) 12(2): 141-158
[15] T. Iver and N. K. Detlefsena, Agriculture and water Management, (2006) 86(3): 269-276
Figure 1 : Study Area. Panchayat Map of Village Rajpara.
BIOINFORMATICA, 2012 Open access Journal for areas of Life Sciences and related Informatics Sciences Volume 1, Issue 1
Figure 2: Village Information system Development with details of three years complete details regarding crop, soil stability and yield.
Figure 3: Crop prediction using microfarm planning system, also considering the micro nutrient for crops.
Figure 4: Mobile registration menu for farmers
Fig. 5 Mindmap based Gujarati Wiki development for open access to whole community.
