Device Made By Odisha Lads Can Detect Bacteria In Crops

Can there be a link between farming and programming? Why not? Ask Rishikesh Amit Nayak, a student of DAV Public School, Chandrasekharpur, because he created such a link.

Rishikesh had seen his grandfather, a farmer, struggling with crop failure due to bacterial attack, which is also the most common cause of crop failure. During his grandfather’s time, the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development in Mumbai was the only place where samples of such crops could be sent for analysis. By the time the farmers got the results, it was inavariably too late.

Encouraged by his father, a professor, the 16-year-old learnt programming in Class VI and deviced a IoT stick with a thermal camera at the end to find a solution to the problem his grandfather faced. He called it Kishan Know. All the farmer has to do is move around his crops with this stick in hand twice a day. The images taken by the camera are then sent to a database that converts them into digital values to calculate the temperature. When the farmer repeats this exercise after 12 hours, the digital values of both sets of photographs are compared and depending on the range, the kind of bacteria affecting the crop is detected. Not just bacteria, it can detect fungi, viruses and so on as well. This information is communicated to the farmers through their mobile phones. “This helps the farmer take quick and exact action,” he explains.

Rishikesh and his team (two other boys) recently won Asia’s largest robotics competition, IRC League, conducted by Avishkaar in New Delhi. Inquisitives, the name Rishikesh’s team went by, were announced the winners of Avishkaar Makeathon (one of the events at the IRC League) in the senior category.