CGIAR-CSI Annual Meeting 2009: Mapping Our Future. March 31 - April 4, 2009, ILRI Campus, Nairobi, Kenya

1. Empowering the World’s Poorest to Escape Poverty
Grameen Foundation Quick Win Project
Community Level Crop
Building Sustainable Businesses in a Developing World
Disease Surveillance
April 2nd, 2009
Improving the lives of small-holder farmers through community level crop disease
surveillance

2. Quick Win Overview
Objective
Build and test the viability of a system that uses mobile
devices equipped with cameras and GPS to locate, diagnose,
and prevent the spread of crop-disease outbreaks and relies
upon a network of rural intermediaries for data collection
and information dissemination.
Partnerships
•International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA)
• National Agricultural Research Organization (NARO)
•Grameen Technology Center
2

3. Community Knowledge Worker Project
CKW Objectives
• Build a network of rural intermediaries to reach
small-holder farmers
• Develop mobile information services that meet the
demands of poor farmers
• Create a cost-effective means for
collecting granular data from rural
communities

4. Community Knowledge Worker Project
•7 month pilot in two sites
•Identify, recruit, train, and support CKWs
•Rapid prototype 4-5 mobile information services
•Conduct 4 mobile surveys using a range of technologies
•Track CKW performance and document findings to design
model for scaling over time

5. Quick Win Approach
•Train and support Community Knowledge
Workers (CKWs)
•Develop mobile tools and back-end system
•Conduct site visits and take samples
• Analyze data to create information products
and maps
• Document findings and fine-tune geospatial
application and surveillance system

6. Why Banana?
• Importance as food crop and cash crop
• Annual losses of $70-$200 million
• High yielding staple food
• Opportunity to monitor resurgence of an
existing disease and threat of a new disease
outbreak simultaneously
• Resurgence of BXW
• Recent alert for BBTV in Uganda

7. Distribution of banana in Uganda
Source: Jerome Kubiriba, NARO

8. Overall control of BBW as per 2008
Source: Jerome Kubiriba, NARO

9. Geospatial Crop Disease Surveillance Application
• Form-based mobile surveys
• Sent via GPRS to back-end system
• Reports analyzed by agricultural experts
• Affirmative reports are mapped
• Team travels to field to confirm certain
percentage (TBD) of affirmative reports
• Target of 1200 surveys over pilot period

10. Banana production constraints
1. Bacterial wilt
2. Banana weevil (SMALL ELEPHANT)
weevil corm damage
Dry necrotic leaves
3. Black Sigatoka 4. Nematodes
wilted banana plant
root damage
5. Fusarium wilt
Yellow leaves
6. Banana streak virus
discoloured
streaked leaf
pseudostem
discoloured corm
Source: Jerome Kubiriba, NARO

11. Disease Control Mobile Information Services
• On-demand mobile information service
• Timely information on disease spread
• Actionable tips
• Information on
– Location of clean planting materials
– Control techniques
– Consequences of inaction
– Disease spread information
• Potential to use photos/diagrams/maps

12. Banana Bunchy Top Disease
What to Do?
DESTROY all infected plants and their suckers
CHECK all your plants
ONLY use healthy planting material
Source: IITA

13. Banana Bacterial Wilt
BREAK OFF the male bud
DESTROY sick plants and their suckers
Use CLEAN S SUCKERS and CLEAN TOOLS
Source: IITA

14. Quick Win Analysis and Outputs
• Analyze CKW ability to accurately identify and
document disease outbreaks
• Evaluate usefulness of information disseminated
• Assess usability of tool
• Analyze data accuracy and ability to map incidence by
pilot area, CKW characteristics, and different classes of
mobile technology
• Estimate required frequency/response time by experts
• Map CKW reports to existing incidence reports
• Map location of clean planting materials to outbreaks
• Map affirmative reports over time

15. GIS output: increase risk awareness e.g. BXW
Impact of BXW?
Uganda:
Uganda: losses of 70 - 200 million
annual
US $
annual losses of 70 - 200 million
US2-3 % of GDP
$
2-3 % of GDP
Burundi and Rwanda:
Burundi and 100 million US $
predicted Rwanda:
predicted 100 million US $
Source: IITA

16. Expected Long-Term Impact
• Decrease spread of crop disease , especially in high
risk areas affected by endemic and emerging
diseases
• Empower small-holder farmers to halt disease spread
through access to timely information
• Enable agricultural experts to plan preventative
measures in a cost and time-effective manner
• Enhance scientists’ ability to monitor disease
outbreaks and disseminate information to farmers in
remote areas and rural communities where regular
visits by extension agents and agricultural scientists
may not be possible

17. Acknowledgements
• IITA
• Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
• CH2M Hill AGCommons
• CGIAR
• FAO
• NARO

18. Project Details
• Approx. 40 CKWs in two districts
• Three mobile devices
• Two six-week pilots
• Two mobile applications
• Monitoring for at least two diseases in banana
• Three experts
• Back-end data analysis on schedule TBD
• Field visits to take samples every two weeks
• Mapping of results on schedule TBD
• Publically available map products