IFFCO integrating drone, Nano and AI technologies for smart farming to make Aatmanirbhar Krishi

Date:05-09-2023

The Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative (IFFCO) is planning to promote the usage of nano fertilizers such as nano Urea and Nano DAP using a drone and Artificial Intelligence technologies at the Pan India level in technical collaboration with Agricultural Universities and technical institutes.

DRONAI is an integrated program that promotes the foliar application of Nano fertilizers and other agrochemicals by combining Drone, Nano, Artificial Intelligence and mobile technologies.

Farmers can access these advanced technologies through their mobile App that would make spraying efficient, cost-effective and safe. While spraying, the Artificial intelligence (AI) based software can detect crop growth and health and guides the farmers towards Smart farming.

The prime focus of this program is to build a successful drone spraying system, operate the system in coordination with rural youth/farmers and train them in advanced technologies that ultimately result in rural entrepreneurship.

All the mandatory protocols related to drones, their transport vehicle and safe flying are inbuilt into this process and coordinated by farmer friendly mobile App. Hence this high-end, integrated drone technology can be promoted in agriculture which would help the farmers to practice hi-tech smart farming.

DRONAI helps to monitor and guide the drone technology effectively in agriculture and promotes nano fertilizer and agrochemicals spray safely in larger areas at a low cost to farmers.

A unique electric tri-wheeler has been specially designed for the safe transport of drones to farmers’ fields

An integrated software platform that can run under any mobile would be available for farmers that would connect all users (drone operator, farmer, field officer and central control unit).

This would help to monitor the drones on a dynamic basis and monitor the spray efficiency (acre/day) remotely.

Besides, the app would help the farmers to book spray well in advance comfortably just by a click in the app. Through DRONAI technology, the spraying cost to farmers shall be reduced by 50 per cent besides saving time and avoiding drudgery and health issues associated with manual spraying of agricultural chemicals.

The trial module of DRONAI was launched by IFFCO in technical collaboration with TNAU on 2nd May at Agricultural Research Station, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU), Coimbatore, India.

Recently Dr. U. S. Awasthi, Managing Director, IFFCO, New Delhi inaugurated this program in the presence of Dr. V. Geethalakshmi, Vice Chancellor, TNAU. Also; Yogendra Kumar, Marketing Director, IFFCO, New Delhi, and Dr. A. Lakshmanan, Managing Director, IFFCO-Nanoventions addressed the farmers on the importance of integrated drone technology in smart farming.

Around 450 farmers from different districts participated in this program to understand more about Drone, Nano and Artificial intelligence Technologies in Agriculture.

This program was jointly organised by Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) and IFFCO.