Spices Board, Rubber Board & Digital University of Kerala to Develop Mobile App for Cardamom Growers

The Spices Board, Rubber Board, and the Digital University of Kerala have signed a memorandum of understanding to create spatial models of soil-nutrients in cardamom fields and develop an Android-based mobile app for cardamom farmers to enable them with the site-specific, need-based fertilizer recommendations.

What is Soil Management?

It’s a crucial part of land-management with the focus on variations in soil varieties and soil characteristics to define specific interventions that are primarily aimed to improve the quality of soil for the selected land use. In present time, specific soil management practices are the need of hour to protect and conserve the soil resources for our future generations.

About the App:

Prudent use of fertilizers and site-specific nutrient management are crucial for economic and environmental reasons. Indian Cardamom Research Institute, Myladumpara (Research wing of the Spices Board) started the collaborative project with the Rubber Research Institute of India, Rubber Board, and the Geospatial Analytics Division of the Digital University (formerly IIITM-K). 

This project will cover and document major, secondary & micronutrient status of cardamom growing regions and use geo-statistical methodologies to create spatial models of soil nutrients and furnish information to farmers through this app.

Spices Board Secretary D. Sathiyan said, ‘’The aim was to develop an equivalent of RubSIS app launched by the Rubber Board to help farmers access data on location-specific soil nutrient status and fertilizer recommendations online.’’

Under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, the Spices Board is one of the five commodity boards and it is accountable for the export promotion of 52 scheduled spices and development of small and large cardamom.

Major producers of small cardamom are Kerala, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu. According to the data of Spices Board, an advanced estimate for 2020-21, around 69,000 hectares are under the crop in the country with a production of 22,500 tonnes.

Moreover, production of cardamom in Kerala is expected to see a downfall this year with farming operations witnessing disruption from shortage of labour & heavy rain. This state has about 50000 hectares under the crop and the annual average production is about 20000 tonnes. There are about 35000 families accounting for over 60% of cardamom production.