Arulraj, S.

Hemanth, G. Krishna

Prasad, M.V.

Rani, K.L. Mary

English

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272Indian farmers receive agricultural informationat present through several sources such asnewspapers, television, telephone consultations,internet, mobile etc. Revolutionary development ininformation technology made mobile phonesavailable for most of the Indian population. Due toits versatility, mobile phones have become powerfultools. In agriculture, mobile message services areused for marketing, extension/education etc.(Dhaliwal et al., 2010). Kisan call centers in thecountry respond to issues raised by farmers onqueries related to agriculture and allied sectors(agricoop.nic.in). Agricultural short messagemanagement system aids in sending and receivingof short messages on agricultural services (Jianget al., 2008).  SMS based application responds tothe query received as SMS in a particular formatwhich retrieves the answer from the database andsends the reply as SMS to the farmer (Mitra et al.,2006, Veeraraghavan et al., 2009).  In all these, thefarmer/user sends the queries to the kiosk/agriculture database/SMS application, which thenretrieves the required information from the databaseand sends it back to the user.Directorate of Oil Palm Research has taken leadunder Indian Council of Agricultural Research(ICAR) with the financial support of TMO&P inimplementing a project on “Oil palm kisan mobilemessage services” (OPKiMMS) for disseminationof oil palm technology to its stake holders forimproving production and productivity of oil palmin the country. As quality of information, itsSoftware design and application for oil palm kisan mobilemessage services in IndiaK.L. Mary Rani, M.V. Prasad, S. Arulraj and G. Krishna HemanthDirectorate of Oil Palm Research, Pedavegi, West Godavari Dt., Andhra Pradesh, India(Manuscript Received: 03-10-13, Revised: 09-03-14, Accepted: 27-06-14)Keywords: Database, mobile message service, oil palm, software*Corresponding Author: klmaryrani@gmail.comtimeliness and trustworthiness are the importantfeatures to be ensured to enable farmers to use iteffectively to improve productivity, the content onoil palm is disseminated to the registered oil palmfarmers through text and voice SMS (Mary Raniet al., 2012). The project was conceptualized to beimplemented in two stages. The first stagecomprised of content development and collectionand compilation of mobile and land line data andpublishing of the messages.  The second stage wasto attend to the queries raised by the farmers.  Thispaper describes the design and development ofsoftware for providing OPKiMMS to the farmers.The software for OPKiMMS was developedusing the Waterfall model of the SoftwareDevelopment Life Cycle (SDLC). The softwareapplication was developed as a web basedapplication with ASP.NET as front end and SQLServer 2008 as back end using embedded SQLqueries to retrieve and update data.  Reports weredeveloped to retrieve information from the databaseusing Crystal Reports 10.0.Waterfall Model of SDLCSoftware development comprises of variousphases such as requirement analysis, design,development, testing and implementation. TheSDLC model describes the activities performed ateach stage of software development. In the Waterfallmodel the development process proceeds to the nextphase after completing the previous phase.The model is easy to understand and manage.Journal of Plantation Crops, 2014, 42(2): 272-275Short Scientific Report273The process of publishing the short messages to theregistered oil palm growers in the specific languageidentified for the State was initially tested real timeby using data in MS Excel and MS Access whichhelped in studying the requirements in real time andaiding in design of the software.ASP.NetASP.NET is a development framework forbuilding web pages and web sites with HTML, CSS,Java Script and server side scripting. ASP. Net codewas written using the VB.Net language. Java scriptwas used for data retrieval of string type data basedon keyword. CSS was used in design of the screens.SQL Server DatabaseSQL Server database is widely used inRelational Database Management System(RDBMS) supporting small applications onstandalone systems to large amount of data accessedon the internet. Identification of the main entities,their relationships and constraints commences thedesign of the database. The entities representdifferent information of OPKiMMS, which includethe message content in English and vernacularlanguages, plantation details along with mobile andland line data, publishing details, message deliveryinformation etc.Crystal ReportsCrystal reports help in designing reports fromwide range of data sources. Crystal Reports forVisual Studio.Net enable to create interactivereports and presentation-quality content.The framework for the software application isgiven in Figure 1.  The content was developed andmobile and land line data of the oil palmstakeholders could be stored and retrieved by usingthe software application.  Using the interfaceprovided by the service provider, the retrievedmessage and the list of mobile and land line numberswhich are in the form of file is used to transmit themessage to the farmer via. the SMS Gateway, SMCCenter and the mobile operator.  The status of thepublished message for each mobile/land line isobtained and updated to the database and retrievedthrough the software.The software application has three mainfunctions viz., data management, messagepublishing management and information retrieval(Fig. 2). Data management further dealt with contentmanagement and contact details. The contact andplantation data management stores the mobile andland line data of the oil palm stake holders viz.,farmers, entrepreneurs, state department officials,research personnel etc. In case of oil palm growers,details of plantations such as year of planting, areaetc. are also made available so that the specificmessages could be sent based on the age ofplantation (i.e., juvenile, adult plantation etc.).Content management stores the SMS contentdeveloped on different aspects of oil palm such asplanting, irrigation, fertilizers, interculturaloperations, intercropping, pest and diseasemanagement, harvesting etc. in English andtranslated to other vernacular languages.The message publishing management is aboutthe data retrieval for publishing the messageFig. 1. Layered structure of OPKiMMS SoftwareOil Palm Kisan Mobile Message Services in India274(content, mobile & land line data), storage ofpublishing details and the status of publishedmessage for each mobile and land line number.  Thesoftware enables to retrieve state and district wiseunique mobile and land line numbers and exportthem into a .csv file. The message content isretrieved by searching the content in English, basedon the keywords typed. Based on the contentretrieved in English and the language selected, themessage in respective vernacular language isretrieved and exported to MS Word file. Messagesending details stores the content of messagepublished, the language in which it is published,text/voice message, date of publishing and list ofmobile numbers to which it is published etc.The published message details contained thedata on the delivery status of the message, the dateand time of delivery and if it is a voice message,the duration of message heard etc. The informationretrieval, retrieves the information in the form ofreports about message content, client details basedon state and district and client type, publishingdetails and receipt of published messages. Userfriendly screens were provided to store and retrievethe data.The software was used since 2012 and morethan 29,515 pre processed mobile and land line datawere collected from six states (Andhra Pradesh,Goa, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra andMizoram) in the country and were updated in thedatabase.  The total customer count was 17,283 ofwhich 96 per cent data pertained to oil palm growersand 85 per cent belonged to Andhra Pradesh whichis the major oil palm growing state. Content for shortmessages on oil palm that was developed in English,was translated to four languages, and stored in thedatabase. Details of the voice files for thecorresponding text messages were stored in thedatabase.  A total of 54 text SMS were published to3.12 lakh mobile numbers with a deliverypercentage of 81 per cent.  A total of 40 voicemessages were published to 3.71 lakh mobile perlandline numbers of which the delivery percentageis 42.75.The software application was useful inhandling the voluminous data in the implementationof the project. This intervention of mobile messageservice would not only help farmers but also helpall the related organizations to work for oil palmdevelopment more effectively and efficiently. TheFig. 2. Functions of OPKiMMS SoftwareRani et al.275software application could further reduce the timeof pre processing by automizing to a certain extent.ReferencesDhaliwal, R.K.  and Joshi, V. 2010. Mobile phones– boon torural social system.  Literacy Information and ComputerEducation Journal 1(4): 261-265.Jiang, X., Gao, W., Liu, W., Zhang, G., Yang, H. and Ping, Y.2008. Research and design of the agricultural shortmessage management system. Computer and ComputingTechnologies in Agriculture, Vol. II.  The InternationalFederation for Information Processing. 259: 833-840.Kisan Call Centre Website http://agricoop.nic.in/PolicyIncentives/kisanCallfirst.htmMary Rani, K.L., Prasad, M.V., Krishna Hemanth, G. andSrinu, B. 2012. Dissemination of oil palm technologythrough information and communication technology.  In:Global Conference on Horticulture for Food, Nutritionand Livelihood Options p. 329.Mitra,P., Samajpati, A., Sarkar, T. and Das, P.K. 2006. An SMSbased rural application for agricultural consultancy andcommodity booking service.  In: InternationalConference on Emerging Applications of InformationTechnology. Computer Society of India (CSI-EAIT),Kolkatta pp. 10-11.Veeraraghavan, R., Yasodhar, N. and Toyama. K. 2009. Waranaunwired: Replacing PCs with mobile phones in a ruralsugarcane cooperative. Information Technologies andInternational Development 5(1): 81-95.Oil Palm Kisan Mobile Message Services in India

Software design and application for oil palm kisan mobile message services in India

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Software design and application for oil palm kisan mobile message services in India

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