Shunya Agritech has launched FodrPulse, a free AI-powered app for growers of hydroponic fodder, in collaboration with Ananda Dairy. The platform was launched on 16 September by Ananda Dairy's founder and chairman Dr Radhey Shyam Dixit with Shunya's chief executive Vijay Singh, deepening a partnership between the two companies.

Hydroponic fodder — green feed grown from grain in trays over a week or so without soil — can ease the livestock nutrition problem, but growers need to run it well every day. FodrPulse is built on a research partnership with ICAR's Indian Institute of Maize Research and on real growing data from Shunya's own growth and logistics centres, where the company has grown fodder hydroponically for the past 24 months.

The app has four parts: FodrVidhi breaks the growing protocol into step-by-step guidance; FodrDrishti judges fodder quality from a photograph at every stage, from grain to finished mat; FodrIQ answers growers' questions with an AI trained on Shunya's own protocols and crop photos; and FodrShield addresses pests and fungal infestations with the company's formulations, described as safe for cattle and people.

'Livestock nutrition breaks down when fodder quality is inconsistent, and that hits milk yield and farmer income directly,' said Mr Singh; the app gives hydroponic fodder units the field learning the company has built up, free, so that others need not learn the hard way. Chief technology officer Ritesh Raj Gupta said it was built around the questions Shunya's own operators actually face.

FodrPulse is free to download from the Play Store and App Store. For dairy regions where green fodder is short in the dry months — a familiar problem across South Asia — a tray-based fodder system with photo-based quality checks is an unusually low-cost piece of decision support.

Source: Krishi Jagran