DEVELOPING COFFEE AI MODEL IN UGANDA

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Coffee is one of Uganda's leading exporter after Gold. In Uganda, two coffee varieties is mainly grown namely Arabic coffee and Robusta coffee.

Averagely coffee in Uganda takes 2 to 3 years to start flowering and fruiting from planting time to the first harvest. The ripe healthy berries are picked, dried and further processed to end products like 'kawa'. According to farmers in Uganda, coffee growing is highly profitable and this has supported their families for decades!

Due to the rising number of diseases like coffee wilt, leaf rust, red blister and pests like black twig borer, tailed caterpillars among others, PlantVillage has thought it helpful to create coffee AI model that will be added to PlantVillage Nuru application. This will help farmers in the country to control the spread of diseases and pests.

Young passionate youths working with Cultiva Dream Team organization in the districts of Mpigi, Kalungu and Masaka have been collecting different images of diseased and healthy coffee leaves and berries. The team is working remotely with PlantVillage engineers to train the model in diseases identification.

Currently, the AI is on its 4th version where it’s able to detect the percentage infection of leaf rust and red blister diseases as well as percentage rate of the healthy leaves and berries on the coffee plants.

The model will further be developed and modified to be able to diagnosis all the pest and diseases attacking coffee showing the different infection rate in percentages and giving instant feedback on how to control the disease to the users.

David Hughes, PlantVillage founder believes that this is going to be one of the best coffee AI models.

 

Written By; Promise Owamaani

 

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