Tefera, Ejigu (2012) Developing Knowledge Based System for Cereal Crop Diagnosis and Treatment: The Case of Kulumsa Agriculture Research Center. Masters thesis, Addis Ababa University.
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Abstract
Cereal production and marketing are the means of livelihood for millions of households in Ethiopia. It is the single largest sub-sector within Ethiopia‟s agriculture, far exceeding all others in terms of its share in rural employment, agricultural land use, calorie intake, and contribution to the national income. However, cereal production in Ethiopia is constrained by technical and socio economic factors. Among the technical factors, cereal crop diseases are the major contributing factors to the low yield. This problem needs sufficient and knowledgeable experts to identify the diseases and describe the methods of treatment and protection at early stage of infestation. The aim of this research is to develop knowledge based system for cereal crop disease diagnosis and treatment that assists agriculture experts and development agents to make timely decisions. To develop cereal crop diagnosis and treatment knowledge based system, important knowledge was acquired through interview and document analysis. Five domain experts were interviewed to elicit the required knowledge about major cereal crops diseases that affect wheat, barley and the symptoms of these diseases as well as treatment methods undertaken to control such diseases. The acquired knowledge was modeled using decision tree that represents the cause effect relationships of symptoms of cereal crop diseases and the pathogens that could be the cause of diseases occurrence. The knowledge was represented using production rule as if-then rules and implemented using swi prolog programming tool. Cereal crop diagnosis knowledge based system (CCKBS) reasons using backward chaining inference mechanism. The inference engine identifies a type of cereal crop diseases as goals and checks the symptoms of cereal crop diseases caused by particular pathogens to diagnose the possible crop disease and provide description and treatment. To determine its applicability in the domain area, the prototype CCKBS has been evaluated by the domain experts through visual interaction based on the criteria of easiness to use, time efficiency, accuracy in diagnosing cereal crop diseases and providing description and treatments. According to the evaluation through visual interaction 80.9% system performance is obtained. This proposed system is applicable and promising for assisting development agents who are working in remote areas where skilled agricultural experts are unavailable for an early treatment to the infected crops before the condition get worse. The cereal crop diagnosis knowledge based system is efficient in solving agriculture problems to make immediate decisions for the outbreak of cereal crop diseases using the type of diseases and their symptoms stored as rules and facts in the knowledge base. The advisory system will improve the productivity of farmers by assisting development agents who advise farmers on their daily needs. Further study should be conducted that incorporates the image of infested crops in the knowledge base to illustrate severity of infected crops and the economic threshold.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Masters) |
|---|---|
| Subjects: | Q Science > QK Botany S Agriculture > S Agriculture (General) S Agriculture > SB Plant culture Z Bibliography. Library Science. Information Resources > Z665 Library Science. Information Science |
| Divisions: | Africana |
| Depositing User: | Selom Ghislain |
| Date Deposited: | 27 Jun 2018 13:20 |
| Last Modified: | 27 Jun 2018 13:20 |
| URI: | http://thesisbank.jhia.ac.ke/id/eprint/6061 |
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