The development of mobile technologies for agricultural disease surveillance has not been the top priority in the Philippines. This is probably so because mobile agricultural service delivery is still at an early stage, and most of the existing services have yet to gain enough traction and long-term sustainability. Recently, DOST-PCAARRD pushed for more innovative agriculture through Project SARAI, which aims to develop a crop forecasting and crop monitoring system for six priority crops – rice, corn, coconut, banana, coffee, and cacao. While the SARAI project continues to be an innovative undertaking, it needs further enhancement, particularly in disease surveillance. This proposed project can complement the ongoing initiatives of the SARAI project.
The project has successfully developed a mobile agricultural disease surveillance system to gather and disseminate disease-related information at a banana farm level. It has also been observed that there was an improvement in banana production and minimized disease control cost. Near real-time disease monitoring has been accomplished as well, through the ROSANNA mobile application.
