With the objective to reduce the crop loss risk of potato caused by late blight disease thru providing early alert via SMS & Voice-call to smallholder farmers around 2-3 days prior to late blight for spraying preventive fungicide, Bayer launched GeoPotato Service in Bangladesh.
The model of GEOPOTATO service owned by Wageningen University and Research (WUR), Netherlands, specialized in collaboration with the Dutch Space agency is going to serve 50,000 farmers initially after launch at 25 Upazila of 9 districts (Rangpur, Lalmonirhat, Dinajpur, Nilphamari, Thakurgaon, Joypurhat, Bogura, Rajshahi and Munshiganj).
The virtual launching program was held on November 01, 2021 participated by Guest of honor H.E. Riaz Hamidullah, Bangladesh Ambassador to Netherlands, Professor Dr. M. Kamruzzaman, Vice-Chancellor, HSTU, Dr. Surajit Saha Roy, Director, Agriculture Information System, DAE, Monirul Alam, Director, FSW, DAE, Dr. Md. Shah Kamal Khan, Project Diector, BAMIS, DAE, Albert Schirring, Global Crop Manger, Vegetables & Potatoes, Bayer, Germany, Ravishankar C, Bayer South Asia and Zahidul Islam, Managing Director, Bayer CropScience Ltd, Bangladesh along with other dignitaries from GO, Bayer Global & Universities.
The main objective of this mobile phone-based Decision Support Systems (DSS) is to provide early alert via SMS & Voice-call to smallholder potato farmers around 2-3 days prior to late blight for spraying preventive fungicide. Firstly, the weather data and a sophisticated Phytophthora disease forecast module is used to forecast the presence of the disease and to fix the 'on-time' application of effective fungicides when there is a disease risk.
As Bayer is working on finding solutions against some of the major challenges of our time with its innovative products and solutions, to cover the information gap regarding crop protection applications against pests & other crop managements, Bayer is working to introduce all possible digital & advance awareness technologies for farmers of the country, like- Better Life farming Center, Bayer Learning Center, and this “GEOPOTATO” service.
