State owned Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management-Kerala (IIITM-K) on Tuesday launched an application to provide soil nutrient information and fertiliser recommendation for coffee plantation owners.

The Kaapi Soil Health Management and Monitoring (Kshemam) app to help farmers identify optimum levels of fertiliser use, is available on www.indiacoffeesoils.net, a GIS-enabled system for the Commerce Ministry.

The GPS enabled soil sampling and nutrient analysis was done in Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu by the National Bureau of Soil and Land Use Planning at the Indian Council of Agriculture Research in Bengaluru.

Coffee growers can find their land by zooming in on the map, entering geographic coordinates or by selecting their administrative divisions and check their soil propertynutrient status and fertiliser recommendation specific to the location.
 

The spatial variation of individual nutrients can also be thematically visualised.

After the fertiliser recommendation is generated, the farmer can generate his fertiliser recommendation, nutrient advisory and soil health card in English, Kannada, Tamil or Malayalam.

"The application is developed using open source technology and has a responsive design that has been tested for compatibility with any screen sizes of tablets and smart phones," said IIITM-K official R. Ajithkumar.