Pests and disease advisory and notification system for food crop farmers in Uganda

Abstract

In this study, a pests and disease advisory and notification system was implemented for farmers in Namasumbi village located in Wakiso District more than 10 miles off Gayaza road to enable them easily access accurate information about pests and diseases as well as measures to extenuate them. This was basically due to the fact that most farmers in this village did not have reliable and accurate access to pests and disease information. Therefore, this posed a challenge in such a way that farmers had to incur extra costs while trying to access pests and disease information in that information would be obtained from sources such as; from fellow farmers, radios, television, agricultural expeditions and sometimes from their past experiences. From the study, these sources were proved at times ineffective since information is most times inaccurate leading to incorrect diagnoses and hence poor crop results. The study used both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Data was collected using interviews and questionnaire data collection methods as well as tools like self-administered questionnaires and interview guides, which were used for collecting data from a total of 41 respondents. In objective one, we reviewed existing systems related to pests and disease information systems and these included; Plantix, Picture This, Plant identifier that were studied to assess their efficiency. Their findings were used to enhance the implementation of the pests and disease advisory and notification system. The researcher collected primary data which was analysed using excel spreadsheets as well as google forms and the user requirements were determined. In objective two, the system was designed using data flow diagrams (DFDs) and enhanced entity relationship diagrams (ERDs). In objective three, the system was implemented using technologies such as Bootstrap, CSS, HTML, JavaScript and MySQL among others and in objective four, the system was tested and validated using unit, integrated, system and user acceptance testing strategies. The findings of the study are a great significance to searchers, Farmers, and other Agronomists across the country. The study also recommends that a localized system that provides information in farmers’ local languages should be implemented in future so as to cater for food crop farmers that do not understand English.