Virtual Agronomist

Client: Charles Gentry, NIAB <charles.gentry@niab.com>

Each year NIAB publishes its Agronomy Strategy to help farmers grow successful crops. The comprehensive advice is based on NIAB's internal research and covers a range of topics including: crop choice and rotation, seed rate and establishment, weed control and fungicide strategies. NIAB would like to use this guide to produce a 'virtual agronomist', an expert system which can be used by farmers to answer their questions. The system should be able to accept a basic natural language question, e.g. "What seed rate should I use for late sown wheat?" and either show the relevant answer, or prompt for more information with further questions, e.g. "What variety of wheat have you sown?", and so on. The virtual agronomist should be accessed through either a website or messenger platform (e.g. WhatsApp). Basic reporting should be made available to administrators, such as frequent query subjects, to identify where to direct new research.