Taking forward its efforts to use technology in addressing societal problems of majority sections, the Telangana Information Technology Association (TITA), has brought out a new solution that would help farmers connect with agriculture scientists and get their farming-related queries answered.
The IT professionals body decided to utilise its Tconsult platform, launched a few months ago, to offer telemedicine consultation to those living in rural areas during the initial days of COVID-19 lockdown, for extending expert advice from agricultural scientists to the farming community. According to TITA founder Sundeep Kumar Makthala, the TConsult app had so far offered free consultation by experts to over 10,000 persons on health issues to circumvent issues of distance and time.
As part of its new initiative, the TITA had added agricultural scientists from Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University (PJTSAU) to TConsult to advise the farming community. The IT professionals body decided to launch the new initiative as some complementary service when the State was moving in the direction of regulated farming.
Minister for Agriculture S. Niranjan Reddy, who on Saturday launched the revised TConsult app to aid farmers , turned the first user of the app. He got connected with former Registrar of Agricultural University Prof. Jalapathi Rao to seek answers to questions related to farming. The Minister lauded the efforts of TITA in launching the farmer-support system via video conference.
Mr. Makthala said the new service on the TConsult app was being piloted in one mandal and TITA was interacting with agricultural university scientists to scale up the project. Among others, it would work to bring online experts in farm-related aspects from other countries too for knowledge sharing. Stating that the TConsult platform was robust and more services would be added in future, Mr. Makthala said farmers could book an appointment on TConsult and interact with scientists. They (TITA) were also in contact with scientists and experts from the Water and Land Management Training and Research Institute (WALAMTARI) to offer expert advice to the farming community, Mr. Makthala added.
