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Telangana agriculture department has signed an agreement with Wadhwani Institute of Artificial Institute (Wadhwani AI) to deploy solutions for the benefit of cotton farmers on Saturday.

"Wadhwani AI has developed an AI solution that equips smallholder cotton farmers with scientific knowledge of an agriculture expert with the help of a simple smartphone," said an official.

The solution, delivered through an app provides real-time localized advisory and surveillance, enabling farmers to catch pest infestations early to take correct and immediate action to avoid significant crop damage and subsequently improve quality of the crop and incomes.

"The solution is based on the scientific concept of action thresholds and is able to predict pink bollworm and American bollworm infestation, two of the most devastating pests for the cotton crop," he said.

In 2020 kharif, the solution was deployed with 700 lead farmers and 17,000 cascade farmers across the four states of Telangana, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Karnataka through agricultural programmes managed by better cotton initiative (BCI) partners.