Dr. Tania, Pengidentifikasi Penyakit Tanaman

Interest in the world of agriculture, encouraged a group of students from Informatics ITB, in collaboration with the Agricultural Engineering Department, created an application called Dr. Tania, which can analyze various plant diseases. This application allows farmers to easily identify plant diseases and provide treatment options.

Dr. Tania is a product of PT. Neura Cipta Nusantara (Neurafarm), one of the tenants of the Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development (LPIK) ITB. The company operates in precision agriculture. Neurafarm was founded in August 2017 with a bold mission: "to modernize the agriculture industry by increasing productivity and efficiency through technology," driven by the vision of "to end world hunger, improve farmer welfare, and make the world a better place."

To achieve this mission, Neurafarm is committed to continuous innovation and providing technologies that can help farmers achieve greater yields more efficiently. Neurafarm's members are Naufalino Fadel Hutomo, Febi Agil Ifdillah, Pebriani Artha, and Lintang Kusuma Pratiwi.

By 2050, the human population is expected to grow to 2 billion people, but agricultural land is shrinking, and fewer people are willing to become farmers. Under these conditions, the world must produce more food to feed a growing population while resources are scarce.

"According to the FAO, 3,000 trillion rupiah is lost annually due to plant diseases worldwide. Therefore, food security is a significant issue today. Why is this loss so significant? First, farmers don't know how to properly manage plant diseases, and second, they don't know the right and effective products to treat them," said Febi, who is also the Co-Founder of Neurafarm, explaining the background to the startup.

He explained that Dr. Tania is a chatbot-based mobile application capable of identifying plant diseases using artificial intelligence (AI) technology. "This application essentially uses AI by giving the computer thousands of examples of plant disease images. The computer then analyzes the patterns," he explained.

It's incredibly easy to use. Users simply take a photo of the diseased plant (leaf) and send it to Dr. Tania. Within seconds, she'll provide a comprehensive diagnosis, including symptoms, treatment options, and access to products that can be used to treat the disease.

"Users can also learn more about plant diseases and proper planting practices by utilizing the information provided in the Dr. Tania catalog," she added. The app also features a direct "ask an expert" option.

Neurafarm has received several awards for Dr. Tania's products, including 3rd Place in the Business Plan Competition at the 7th Studentpreneur held by the Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Indonesia in early 2018, Gold Prize at the World Invention and Technology Expo (WINTEX) 2018 held by ITB and INNOPA, 1st Place in the Swiss Innovation Challenge Asia-Indonesia 2018, and 2nd Place in the Startup Istanbul Challenge 2018 in Istanbul, Turkey after being selected from 93,200 startups from around the world.

In addition, Dr. Tania's products have been several times innovative products that have competed to represent Indonesia in various international events, including the Microsoft Imagine Cup Asia Pacific 2018 Finals in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the Swiss Innovation Challenge 2018 in Basel, Switzerland, and the Asian Entrepreneurs Awards 2018 in Japan.

The application is currently only capable of analyzing 14 crop commodities with 33 diseases. He plans to expand the number of crop commodities and their diseases in the future. He also wants to try to accommodate farmers' sales revenues, as many of the farmers he's met have complained about falling selling prices. "We'll try to distribute directly from farmers to buyers, but we need to consider marketing first," he added.