About e-Extension Centre

Recent developments in the field of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are indeed revolutionary in nature. ICT, when used as a broad tool for educating the communities especially extension professionals and knowledge intermediaries, heralds the formation of a new class of society–the Knowledge Society. Knowledge thereby becomes the fundamental resource for all economic and societal developmental activities in the highly competitive and pluralistic world.

The following are the Open-Source ICT initiatives in e-Extension centre for the benefit of field extension officials, scientists, students, farmers and stakeholders in Tamil Nadu and India.

• Funding support from Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (NADP) during 2008-09 & 2012-13 Need assessment through stakeholder’s brainstorming workshops.
• Content design, development, validation and launch on 27th October, 2009.
• A-Z information on Agriculture and Allied Subjects.
• An unique, dynamic and multimedia based portal for the benefit of field extension officials and farmers.
• Bi-lingual language (Tamil & English).
• Covering more than ten lakh pages of information.

Salient Features of Portal 

• Linked all the developmental departments under one platform.
• Success stories-nearly 900 success stories have been documented and uploaded in the portal. Farmers’ organization, federations and producer organization informations are added.
• Crop pest and disease details and forecast information uploaded monthly.
• Image based nutritional disorder in Agriculture and Horticultural crops
• Detailed information on special technologies like sustainable sugarcane initiatives, system of rice intensification, ultra high density planting, red gram cultivation through drip and fertigation, precision farming etc,
• Post harvest technologies, value addition and farm enterprises
• Information on Daily Market Price information for perishable commodities, Domestic and Export Market Intelligence Cell (DEMIC) price forecast for major commodities are linked.
• Minimum Support Price (MSP), State Support Price (SSP), input availability, export and import formalities and patents details are added.
• Government of India and Government of Tamil Nadu, agriculture related schemes, programmes and services are uploaded in the portal.
• All the Nationalized, Commercial, Cooperative and Scheduled banking and credit information are uploaded.
• Daily news paper information on farming in English and Tamil languages and archives from 2010 onwards.
• On-line Community e-Radio (Podcasting) with daily updation Outcome
• Daily Visitors 3,000-6,000 (approx)
• Average time on Site 15-17.50 minutes
• Number of page hits / day 700-920 pages (approx)
• New visitors / day 200-250 (approx.)

• ICAR funded and networking project
• Expert systems for crop (Paddy, Sugarcane, Ragi, Coconut and Banana) and animal enterprises (Cow, Goat, Poultry)
• Multi-lingual (English, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada) expert system
• Three key components viz., Decision Support System, Crop Doctor, and Information System Off-line mode.
• Decision Support System consists if and then queries based multi-optional system to choose correct season, varieties, irrigation, nutrient, farm tools, post harvest technology etc.
• Crop Doctor deals with diagnosing the pest, disease and nutritional disorders. Key Visual Symptoms (Primary Symptom) with multiple sub-levels (Secondary Symptoms) to identify the appropriate problem and solution which generates report.
• Information System is a web based system, where we can get the details in the form of static pages.