The Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) has developed an app called "Khamari". Standing in the field, a farmer can use it to determine which crop will grow best on the land and how much fertiliser and pesticide to apply.

Home and Agriculture Adviser Lieutenant General (retd.) Md. Jahangir Alam gave the information after visiting BARC and holding a meeting at Khamarbari in Dhaka on Tuesday, 4 February.

The adviser said people do not know how much progress has been made in agriculture. Rice is the staple food, and the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute and BARC are researching how to improve it. The country hardly needed to import rice last year, he said, but some imports are needed this year because two successive floods caused damage; if the Boro crop is good, imports may not be necessary. Prices of potatoes, onions and vegetables have fallen this year, and he warned that when prices fall too far, farmers lose and may not grow the crop again.

Farmers often apply too much fertiliser, which is very bad for the soil, he said, but using the Khamari app will keep fertiliser use at the right level. He also noted a new fertiliser, DOP, which contains 20 percent of urea's nutrient; a farmer using it could apply 80 percent of the usual urea and get the remaining 20 percent from DOP.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.