Line platform gives farmers helping hand: institute

• By Esme Yeh / Staff reporter

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The Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute said it has developed a Line-based pest-management platform for rice and cucumber farmers that reduced average query times by at least 90 percent to less than a minute in field tests.

Rice is an important staple crop with an annual output value of more than NT$35 billion (US$1.1 billion), while small cucumbers are harvested repeatedly and require pest and disease control throughout the harvest period, the institute said last week.

It therefore developed the platform to help farmers promptly get information on pest and disease management, it said.

The Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute logo is pictured in an undated photograph.

Photo: Screen grab from the institute’s X account

Farmers previously managed pests and diseases based on experience, or by searching for information online or making telephone inquiries, the institute said.

That can be time-consuming and the information is scattered and inconsistent, it said.

The new platform uses Line, which most agricultural workers already know how to use, so they do not need to download or learn another app, it said.

Users can search for pest and disease information by crop and images of damage symptoms, it said.

The platform then recommends pesticides and provides dilution ratios and pre-harvest intervals, the institute said.

The system can retrieve the latest pesticide-use information from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency’s Web site, it said.

Users can scan pesticide-product barcodes to access safe-use information and use a separate feature to calculate dilution ratios, it said.

Field testing showed that the platform reduced average query times to less than a minute from about 10 minutes with manual data retrieval, a time reduction of at least 90 percent, it said.

It can also assist agribusinesses, grain dealers, agricultural cooperatives or local production and marketing groups in contract farming management and pesticide-use compliance, it said.

The institute said it plans to license the technology to an agricultural information service provider to build, operate and maintain the system for eventual use by agribusinesses and their contracted farmers.