Decision supporting system for enhancing upcountry vegetable cultivation in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Agriculture is considered to be the most widely spread and most commonly practiced form of employment in Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan society has been dependent on agriculture since the beginning of its early civilization. Agriculture is the most important sector of the economy which fulfills the basic food needs of the citizens. This project considers upcountry vegetables; particularly selected four crops of which the information related to these are so important for development of this sector. The areas where upcountry vegetables have been cultivated fall into different agro-ecological zones varying from rain fall, elevation, land type, height of the top soil, slope of the land and soil erosion etc. The potential of information technology (IT) can be assessed as a tool for direct contribution to agricultural productivity and as an indirect tool for empowering farmers to take informed and quality decisions which will have positive impact on the agricultural activities. In this project, it is attempted to build an indirect tool for all interested parties including farmers aiming to develop an information system to that facilitates accurate and reliable forecasting through data mining to enhance upcountry vegetable cultivation in Sri Lanka. This information system going to use two sets of data; particularly one from Data Bank of Hector Kobbekaduwa Agrarian Research and Training Institute and the other from a sample survey conducted by this tools web interface developed using a content management system and using the sample data that recorded harvest will be forecast through data mining and creating appropriate modules and finally these modules will be incorporated in to the information system. The final phase of the project is the evaluation of the web-based information system with several different data mining algorithms. The Project has successfully implemented dynamic filtering, classification and prediction of data using the latest technologies and tools available in the field of IT to uplift the agricultural field in Sri Lanka and the evaluation of its performance looks promising for practical implementation.