Now manage orchards, plantations using Artificial Intelligence

Climate change is a reality and a threat to agriculture and horticulture, and it has to be dealt with on a priority basis. The only way to achieve this is through technological innovation
#Climate change

India is a net producer of
many fruits and vegetables. While vegetables can be grown at scale in open
fields to climate-controlled glasshouse/polyhouse/containers for commerce, they
can also be produced in more restricted spaces like kitchen gardens, allotments
and rooftops (mostly suited for personal consumption or catering to a premium
market).

Most fruit crops, on the other hand, are grown in orchards or plantations over sizeable land areas.
Vegetables being the short duration in nature, their cultivation can be better managed
and shielded from the adversities of a changing climate when compared to orchard/plantation
crops.

The establishment costs and associated risks of an orchard are significantly higher than vegetable fields,
and return-on-investment delayed for years until it reaches the stage of
fruit-bearing. However, even after reaching fruit-bearing, the phenomenon of
irregular bearing (dominant in perennial fruit crops) and governed by flowering
phenology owing to environmental conditions, germplasm, rootstocks, and
cultural operations can greatly impact the productivity and profitability of an
orchard.

The major fruits are grown in India
(in terms of area under cultivation, in descending order) are mango, citrus
fruits (mandarin, lime/lemon, orange, others), banana, apple, guava, pomegranate,
jackfruit, papaya, grapes, pineapple, sapota and watermelon among others.


Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar
Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Jammu
& Kashmir, Telangana, West Bengal, Kerala, Himachal Pradesh and Chhattisgarh
are the largest fruit-producing states in India with an area under cultivation
greater than 200,000 hectares. Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha,
Telangana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Bihar, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal
are the top-10 mango-growing states in India (in terms of area). Karnataka,
Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat are the largest
Banana growing states (in terms of area). While Telangana, Maharashtra and
Andhra Pradesh is the largest orange-growing states, the area under
cultivation (using 2014-15 as a base) in these states have seen a sharp decline.

The area under cultivation
(in ‘000 ha) in Andhra declined from 72.86 to 70.11 in 2016-17, Telangana from
118.10to 60.12, and Maharashtra from 61.82 to 54.89 for the same time period (Source: Horticulture Statistics
Division, Ministry of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers Welfare).

Zooming in on mango, banana
and orange cultivation across India, the size of the majority of holdings ranges
from below 0.5-4.0 ha (Source: Horticulture
Statistics Division, Ministry of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers Welfare),
which are best classified as marginal to small to medium holdings.

Owing to this very nature of
the holdings, large scale mechanization poses critical challenges. Also noteworthy is the fact that average harvest
and post-harvest loses has increased over the years for Banana, Citrus, Sapota
and other crops. Change in weather patterns with warmer temperatures, intense
sunshine and erratic rainfall with uneven distribution has led to a spurt of
pest and diseases, some even hitherto unknown to that particular crop.


Citrus dieback and huanglongbing (HLB is vector-borne) are currently the two major diseases destroying several hectares
of orange crops, causing the short supply and a sharp increase in the price of the fruit
even in domestic markets, and inflicting severe economic losses for the growers
and the country (exports).

On the other hand, Tropical
race 4 (TR4), the virulent strain of fungus Fusarium oxysporum cubense that is
threatening banana crop globally with the fusarium wilt disease has killed off
millions of bananas in Africa and Asia (from the 1980s onwards). It had
surfaced in the Cavendish group of bananas in parts of Bihar and is now
spreading to Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and even Gujarat, which could spell
havoc for the country’s banana industry.

Even though India is the
largest banana producing country in the world and third-largest orange-producing
country, our exports for these crops are mainly to the Middle East and some
neighbouring countries. Very little, if not any, is exported to the US or EU.

In spite of such high
production, India’s banana exports generate a meager$49.8 million, with the United Arab Emirates alone buying bananas worth $16.3 million. Ecuador, whose banana
output is one-fourth of India, raked in exports worth $3.0 billion in 2017.

In view of existing and new
edaphological, climatological, biotic and technological challenges which
characterize the 15 or more agro-climatic zones of India, we have to think on
our feet to mitigate losses, increase output while putting the greatest emphasis
on quality, make production systems sustainable, reduce carbon footprint, and boost
farm incomes by also aiming for better prices (based on differentials)through
diversification of the product (organic or conventional, raw or processed,
value addition, etc), the customer (domestic and international) and export base.


Climate change is a reality
and the threat to agriculture and, horticulture, in particular, has to be dealt with
on a priority basis. The only way to achieve this is through technological
innovation leading to precision agriculture as it has been proven beyond doubt
that more input doesn’t translate to more output and very often leaves behind a
trail of problems like residue, toxicity, resistance buildups, which have
already rendered vast swathes of land unfit for use. In food-producing
countries like India, China and other Asian countries where the average land
holding is less than 1 ha, this could also mean the complete loss of
livelihoods and income for the majority of farmers as the cost of soil reclamation could
be cost-prohibitive.

SBSF Consultancy understands
the inherent problems that reside within each and every agricultural production
system, and has a successful track record of mitigating them. We do so by
leveraging a rich network of agricultural research scientists and experts
spread across the world in the field of crop sciences, data science (DS),
machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), regulatory affairs (RA),
food safety, and business strategy.

We assist companies,
not-for-profit organizations, governments and international bodies in areas
related to agricultural production, business and market development across
production systems and crops. Going beyond traditional consulting, by applying DS,
we have supported project development based on ML and data engineering applied
to the agricultural sector in particular (Digital Farming and Precision Agriculture).

SBSF Consultancy can bring
about the enhancement of productivity, quality and sustainability of existing fields
and orchards by promoting technological solutions in project mode.


AIis steadily emerging as
part of the agriculture industry’s technological evolution. By leveraging
computer vision and deep-learning algorithms to process data captured by
satellites/drones and or software-based technology (databases) we can assist in
monitoring crop and soil health while making active and timely recommendations
for better outcomes. ML models can also be developed and deployed (on a project
basis) to track and predict various biotic and abiotic factors affecting or
likely to affect crop yield: a predictive rather than reactive approach to crop
management!

By being an agricultural domain
focused, we are better positioned to take advantage of a large part of the processes in ML and AI that
are open-sourced. With growing access to efficient cloud-based infrastructure
and large computation power, technology is rarely the showstopper for building
ML solutions, but rather understanding the business case and the data
available, along with the know-how of implementing solutions at scale. This is
spurring the growth of small, but highly differentiated service providers who
can support organizations to accelerate their journey to ML by providing very
niche and specific know-how in business and technology, but with a much lower
cost base than conventional large service providers.

The paper was published by Mukti Sadhan Basu, Shravani Basu and Sébastien Foucaud

(Views are personal)

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