Indian scientists have created an ‘agricultural Wikipedia’ to act as an online repository of agricultural information in the country. It would disseminate crop and region-specific information to researchers, students, farmers and agricultural extension workers, who share the knowledge with farmers. The site also has blogs and other platforms. The website currently contains information on nine crops — rice, wheat, chickpea, pigeon pea, vegetable pea, lychee, sugarcane, groundnut and sorghum. More topics will be added soon, after being validated through review and analysis by invited agricultural researchers. “It is hoped that even where farmers have no access to the Internet, the Agropedia information can be used as a basis for radio plays, for example,” says V. Balaji, head of knowledge management and sharing with the International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), a partner in the project.
