*For designing Al-Based Crop Disease Detector
By; SANI ALIYU, Zaria
Six students of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Zaria have won the second position in the FCMB Agrictech Hackathon 2024 competition with a cash prize of (N2m) two million Naira.
A statement issued by the Public Affairs Directorate of the University said the students won the prize for developing a crop disease detector designed to be deployed as an innovative solution to assist farmers in the early detection of diseases peculiar to crops in northern Nigeria.
The device called ‘Crop Disease Detector’ is an affordable and user-friendly AI-based system that works real-time but offline (only online for updates) which makes it suitable for use even in remote areas.
It scans and detects various diseases affecting crops majorly grown in the northern part of Nigeria, as well as provides recommendations or remedial solutions to farmers over the identified diseases.
The system can also be scaled up to adapt to different crops and regional variations in disease prevalence.
The statements further said the award ceremony took place at the Primrose Tower, FCMB Head Office, Lagos on Monday, 30th September, 2024, with Sufiyanu Ibrahim of the Department of Computer Engineering collecting the prize on behalf of the team and the University.
The six-member team, tagged ‘Agro Guardians’, is made up of the following students: Sufiyanu Ibrahim, Department of Computer Engineering; Hadiza Mohammed, Department of Computer Science; and Salim Babangida, Department of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering.
Others are Lawal Uzairu, Department of Electrical Engineering; Abubakar Taufik, Faculty of Agriculture; and Abdulfattah Omisanya, Department of Agricultural and Bio-resources Engineering.
The FCMB Agrictech Hackathon is focused on addressing inadequate funding for agricultural research and development, inadequate infrastructure for storage and transportation, limited access to credit for small-scale farmers, and limited adoption of technology in agriculture.
For the competition, there were over 1,400 submissions from registered businesses, teams of developers and individual developers from more than 20 Countries.
