ACI Ltd is developing a mobile application to provide advanced information to farmers, policymakers and agricultural workers on growth of plants, their health status as well as weather forecast.

“This will significantly enhance the productivity of farmers, leading to an overall improvement in farmers' decision making and national food production,” the company said in a statement after a workshop on empowering farmers through advanced information yesterday.

ACI in association with the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) and the Netherlands-based SNV organised the event at Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council's office in Dhaka. ACI, which has also presence in farm machinery, seed and crop protection segments of agribusiness, is developing the application with support from Netherlands Space Office. The beta version of the app is expected to be launched in September.

The full-fledged app will be introduced in January next year, said Shamim Murad, team leader of the Intelligent Decision Support System project that is developing the app.

The app will provide crop-specific and location-specific advisory services on crop suitability, better agronomic practices, pest and disease alert and weather forecast for farmers, said Murad, adding that information will be provided by analysing satellite images  Md Golam Maruf, DAE director general, and FH Ansarey, managing director and CEO of ACI Agribusiness, also spoke.