Agridaksh- A tool for Developing Online Expert System

Abstract

An “Expert System” is an intelligent computer program that uses knowledge and inference procedures to solve problems that are difficult enough to require human expertise for their solution. Developing an expert system in a specific knowledge domain is quite a difficult task as it requires team of experienced knowledge engineers, programmers as well as domain experts. Agriculture, being a very vast and varied domain of knowledge with over a hundred crops distributed in different geographic regions having varied climatic conditions, building such a team in every domain of knowledge of agriculture is itself a challenging and huge task. Knowledge engineers gather knowledge from domain experts and put it in such a form that system can use for inferring and reasoning using a knowledge representation technique. Programmers then build an online interface so that the end users can use the system over the Internet. In this paper, AGRIdaksh a tool for building online expert system is presented. It enables domain experts to build online expert system in their crops with minimal intervention of knowledge engineers and programmers. The tool can be accessed from http://expert.iasri.res.in/ agridaskh. AGRIdaksh is a generic system for all crops with ability to create knowledge models for new crops. It has Ontology based diseases diagnosis, insects identification and variety selection. It is built on robust, platform independent Java technology using n-tier web architecture and therefore have inbuilt support for Unicode and other handheld devices. It also captures location specific variety information with the ability to add multiple pictures for each variety. It has comprehensive plant protection module that provide information on diseases, insects, weeds, nematodes and physiological disorders. With its use, it is possible to build online expert system for each and every crop in significantly less time and resources. The system has been tested on Maize crop and is online for last one year. Online expert systems have the capacity to transfer location specific technology and advice to farmers efficiently and effectively.