2017 ICT4D Conference

In general, across India, fertilizer recommendations are generally made as blanket recommendations and do not reflect differences in indigenous soil fertility, prevailing crop management practices, yield responses, or attainable yield potential across sites or years. Site Specific nutrient management (SSNM) was a general concept for optimizing the supply and demand of nutrients according to their variation in time and space. However, for scaling SSNM approach, new ways need to be identified and developed. IRRI in partnership with other national and international organizations has developed a web- and mobile phone based application/software’ ‘Crop Manager for Rice-based Systems, (CMRS) uses recent advances in ICT and aims to increase farmer's net income and sustain the productivity for rice-based cropping systems. CMRS provides irrigated and rainfed farmers with rice-based cropping systems with a crop and nutrient management guideline customized to the needs of an individual farmer. With mobile phone and internet penetrating fast in rural India – India has 110 million mobile internet users of which 25 million are in rural India – these ICT-based tools, especially in the future, will serve as a useful platform to take knowledge to the farmers easily and when they need it. Aiming to increase a farmer’s income by US$100 per hectare per crop, the Rice Crop Manager was released in Bangladesh in 2015 and in Bihar and Odisha, India in 2016. These ICT tools are based on strong scientific principles and show an edge over the traditional soil testing facilities, which usually take more time to give recommendations and require farmers to carry soil samples to a testing facility. With the help of technologies like Crop Manager, it is expected that farmers in South Asia will be able to replicate high-tech precision farming used in developed countries with easy-to-use and low-cost options.