PlanteSaine: An Artificial Intelligent Empowered Mobile Application for Pests and Disease Management for Maize, Tomato, and Onion Farmers in Burkina Faso

• Published in: Agriculture (Basel) Vol. 14; no. 8; p. 1252
• Main Authors: Appiah, Obed, Hackman, Kwame Oppong, Diallo, Belko Abdoul Aziz, Ogunjobi, Kehinde O, Diakalia, Son, Valentin, Ouedraogo, Abdoul-Karim, Damoue, Dabire, Gaston
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01-08-2024
• Subjects: Accessibility; Agricultural practices; Agricultural technology; Agriculture; Applications programs; Artificial intelligence; artificial intelligence in agriculture; Artificial neural networks; Burkina Faso; Burkina Faso agriculture; Corn; Cybersecurity; Developing countries; Disease management; Diseases; Epidemics; Farmers; Feature extraction; Food plants; Food security; Food supply; Image enhancement; Internet access; LDCs; Management tools; Medical equipment; Medical imaging; mobile application for farmers; Mobile computing; Neural networks; Onions; pest and disease detection; Pests; Physiological apparatus; Plant diseases; Real time; real-time plant diagnosis; Smart phones; Smartphones; Software; Sustainable agriculture; sustainable farming practices; Sustainable practices; Tomatoes; Vegetable industry; Wireless telephone software; Burkina Faso
• ISSN: 2077-0472; 2077-0472
• DOI: 10.3390/agriculture14081252

This study presents PlanteSaine, a novel mobile application powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) models explicitly designed for maize, tomato, and onion farmers in Burkina Faso. Agriculture in Burkina Faso, like many developing nations, faces substantial challenges from plant pests and diseases, posing threats to both food security and economic stability. PlanteSaine addresses these challenges by offering a comprehensive solution that provides farmers with real-time identification of pests and diseases. Farmers capture images of affected plants with their smartphones, and PlanteSaine’s AI system analyzes these images to provide accurate diagnoses. The application’s offline functionality ensures accessibility even in remote areas with limited Internet connectivity, while its messaging feature facilitates communication with agricultural authorities for guidance and support. Additionally, PlanteSaine includes an emergency alert mechanism to notify farmers about pest and disease outbreaks, enhancing their preparedness to deal with these threats. An AI-driven framework, featuring an image feature extraction phase with EfficientNetB3 and an artificial neural network (ANN) classifier, was developed and integrated into PlanteSaine. The evaluation of PlanteSaine demonstrates its superior performance compared to baseline models, showcasing its effectiveness in accurately detecting diseases and pests across maize, tomato, and onion crops. Overall, this study highlights the potential of PlanteSaine to revolutionize agricultural technology in Burkina Faso and beyond. Leveraging AI and mobile computing, PlanteSaine provides farmers with accessible and reliable pest and disease management tools, ultimately contributing to sustainable farming practices and enhancing food security. The success of PlanteSaine underscores the importance of interdisciplinary approaches in addressing pressing challenges in global agriculture