Govt launches e-pest surveillance device
Portable hand-held device helps in capturing data on pests and beneficial insects for farmers

NEW DELHI, INDIA: In a first ever step in addressing the farming community, which drives the economic growth of India, the government today launched E-pest surveillance device.

Union Agriculture Minister, Sharad Pawar, launched the device – a portable, hand-held device, a type of protected Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), for capturing data on pests and beneficial insects and sending it to institutes where it is made part of databases.

The device can withstand rough field conditions (dust and water, high temperature, poor visibility, etc) and has high battery life for long field use.

This enables application of ICT for farmers' benefit. Pests cause heavy damage to various crops and are known to affect some crops such as cotton, rice, fruits and vegetables, if not properly controlled.

At present, there is no effective surveillance and database on pest build up. Such survey and database is a prerequisite for reliable pest forecasting.

The surveillance apparatus in the field is poor, and part of this poor surveillance is lack of an easy system for capturing field observations in a standard format and immediately transmitting the data upwards.

E-pest device is aimed at filling the gap. The introduction of this device will help in achieving high level of pest surveillance and issue of farm advisories for effective pest management.

In the long run, the database would be used for understanding long-term implications of climate change and such other phenomenon on crop-pest relationships.

The field observation official fills up forms provided by very simple and user-friendly software in the device.

The software makes a summary of the observations, and the official sends the summary to the National Center for IPM through Internet.

The data will form part of the database maintained by the center.

The database is geo-referenced using a GPS (geo-positioning system) so as to pin-point pest data to different geographical areas.

The device has been field-tested in four districts of Andhra Pradesh and the results show that it is user-friendly.

To start with, 100 devices are being put into operation, though about 5000 would be required to cover a reasonable area.

National Plant Protection Training Institute, Hyderabad will provide training on use of this device.

States may use funds available under schemes such as Macro Management, Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, and National Horticulture Mission.

Agriculture Ministry is issuing detailed guidance to states on different related aspects.

Plant Protection Division of Department of Agriculture and Cooperation have developed the e-pest surveillance device with the help of FAO and the National Center for Integrated Pest Management, ICAR.