Investigating the use of multi agent technology for agricultural information systems

Abstract

The field of Agriculture could be considered as one of the main knowledge intensive domains. It is highly dependent on various aspects such as environmental conditions, market movements, pest controlling, crop management and soil conditions. These aspects are highly dynamic in nature, as a result, agriculture domain itself could be considered as a complex system. Throughout generations people were trying to simplify this complexity by addressing it through different means in different eras. As a result, various ICT approaches to address this complexity have been proposed. Subsequently, AI based approaches found to be the promising technology in the areas of this nature, because when it comes to real world problem solving, people survive within the complexity by being communicative with each other. This real life problem solving approach could be modeled as a Multi Agent System in which each inter connected entity could be modeled to represent a separate agent such as Environment Agent, Market Agent, Seed Agent, Soil Agent , Fertilizer Agent, and Pest Agent. In this research we hypothesise that, by modeling interrelated areas as agents and by means of negotiating among each entity, it is possible to solve queries related to agriculture domain. Users such as Agriculture researchers, “Govi Jana Seva” officers, and farmers could access the system through the Internet and mobile phones to place requests and queries. This paper present background information about this complex problem domain and evaluates the above hypothesis. At the same time it presents the technological and implementation details followed by the evaluation, conclusion and discussion.