The 1993 release of NCSA Mosaic at Illinois led on the same campus to some of the earliest uses of the Web for agricultural extension. The AIM Lab (Agricultural Media Lab) was the one of the first labs in the world to focus on web-based agricultural education and extension. Our collaboration on web projects for Indian agriculture began with visting scholar Dr. Sandhya Shenoy's three month stay with us in 1998. The  Agricultural Gateway to India was the result and the impetus for further work.

Archive

• Reliance Presentation - Prof. M. A. Pai and John Schmitz (requires high bandwidth connection)
  
• Web-Based Extension - Presented at CISCE2002 in Beijing, China.
  
• Agricultural Gateway to India - This 1997 project created the first agricultural portal in India. The project was conceived and overseen by Dr. Sandhya Shenoy of ICAR's NAARM research center in Hyderabad. It includes a directory of all KVK & ATIC's, multi-lingual Audio Files on rice varieties, and other features.
  
• Agricultural Information Systems - Invited presentation at the M.S. Swaminathan Foundation, Chennai, India
  
• IT Action Plan for Soybean Sector - Based on an extensive and ongoing collaboration with SOPA (India’s association of Soybean Processors) and outgrowth of the 2001 Indian Soy Forum. Applies lessons of StratSoy and Online Agronomy Handbook to provide online resources for soybean farmers, researchers and students. Another goal was to provide a model of IT planning for other commodity groups in India.
  
• Technical Background for Five Year Plan - We worked with Dr. M.S. Swaminathan in his capacity as Chair of the Five Year Plan for Extension. At his request we created an Action Plan to scale up the web delivery of agricultural extension programs in India.

Campus Partners
Dr.  M. A. Pai, Electrical and Computer Engineeering
Creator of  IndUsSciTech 

Related Presentations & Sites
Interactive Agronomy Handbook
Full text chapters plus calculators for nitrogen rate, limestone, seed drop rate, replant decisions, stand counting, and yield estimation. The Nutrient Management and Soil Plan applications help farmers manage nutrients based on soil test results, soil type, crop, anticipated yield and federal rules. Large databases with climate and soil information provide inputs for some calculations. The Agriweather Toolbench estimates precipitation, temperatures, corn growth stages and pest emergence for specific locations. Wireless web and PDA access enables the use of some IAH tools in the field.  

1994 Cyberfarm
AIM Lab helped the CCnet Agriculture Committee in Champaign County, Illinois build the Cyberfarm, the first agricultural portal for farmers. An extensive system of hotlists provided farmers the chance to easily locate agricultural web sites in the county such as Illini FS and Frito-Lay. Cyberfarm also included one of the first farmer's home page on the web, the John Riefsteck farm. The project was exciting due to the close involvement of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and its founder Larry Smarr.