Soil Nutrient Based Mobile App for Crop-wise Fertilizer Recommendation: A “SoilNutro” Application

Abstract

Agriculture is the most important occupation for most Indian families in India. A relatively larger Indian population lives in rural areas. The majority of rural people depend on agriculture for their livelihood. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the government and information technology to provide relevant information related to agricultural technologies for better crop production so that farmers can feed India's growing population. Soil fertility refers to the ability of soil to sustain agricultural plant growth. The farmer needs to know the soil fertility of soil of their farm holding that soil is either capable of better crop production or not. Therefore, it is very necessary to know soil health for increasing crop production and reduce the cost of production. The available nutrient content is an important parameter to determine soil health. Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P), and Potassium (k) are major nutrients that are needed in the crop field with large amounts in the form of fertilizers. In the technology front, we all are aware that the mobile phones have become one of the major sources of communication technologies in developed and developing countries in the last few decades. With the realization of this fact about the use of smartphones, the development of a mobile application called ‘SoilNutro’ has been done. SoilNutro app has been developed to achieve the nutrient status of a specific location of users. It also recommends the combination of fertilizer doses required for crops based on current nutrient status for efficient use of various fertilizers. ‘SoilNutro’ app has been developed using minimum SDK version of API 24: Android 7 on the android platform. The developed Android application 'SoilNutro' will be of great use to provide farmers with a specific location of nutrients and recommend crop-wise fertilizer based on the available nutrient.