Empowering Agriculture: Exploring User Sentiments and Suggestions for Plantix, a Smart Farming Application

Abstract

Farming activities are transforming from traditional skill-based agriculture into knowledge-based and technology-driven digital agriculture. The use of intelligent information and communication technology introduces the idea of smart farming that enables farmers to collect weather data, monitor crop growth remotely and detect crop diseases easily. The introduction of Plantix, a pest and disease management tool in the form of a mobile application has allowed farmers to identify pests and diseases of the crop using their mobile devices. Hence, this study collected the reviews of Plantix to explore the response of the users on the Google Play Store towards the application through Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling. Results indicate four latent topics in the reviews: two positive evaluations (compliments, appreciation) and two suggestions (plant options, recommendations). We found the users suggested the application to additional plant options and additional features that might help the farmers with their difficulties. In addition, the application is expected to benefit the farmer more by having an early alert of diseases to farmers and providing various substitutes and a list of components for the remedial measures.