AI at work
Apple growers
For an orchard, AI is most useful on the phone in your pocket: a photo of a spotted leaf, a question asked out loud in Urdu, the sums for high-density planting worked out before you spend. It is a quick first opinion — the season, the schedule and the scientist still decide.
AI Magic for Farmers: Plantix
Discover Agriculture
What a photo-diagnosis app actually does, shown on a phone: take a picture of the sick plant, get the likely problem and what to do (3 minutes).
Three tools to learn first
Everyday tools from Google, on the phone you already have. Learn these three and most of this page follows.
Gemini Notebook
formerly NotebookLM
Upload SKUAST-K’s package of practice and this year’s spray schedule once. Then ask “what do I spray at petal fall, and how much?” — the answer comes from the schedule, with the page it is on.
Open Gemini NotebookGemini
with Canvas
Ask out loud in Urdu: the sums before selling, a message to a buyer in Delhi, what a word on a pesticide label means.
Open Gemini- Works offline
Gemma on your phone
in Google AI Edge Gallery
In the orchard with no signal: ask about a label or a dose, offline.
Open Gemma on your phone
New to these? Start with the short guide to all three, with a tutorial in Hindi and a note for Jio users.
Three things to try this week
- 1
Your spray schedule, in a notebook that answers in Urdu
Upload SKUAST-K’s package of practice and this year’s spray schedule (the PDF, or photos of the printed pages) into Gemini Notebook once. Then ask it your questions through the season.
Yeh SKUAST-K ka spray schedule hai. Mujhe aasan Urdu mein bataiye: petal fall stage par kaun si dawai, 100 litre paani mein kitni, aur agla spray kitne din baad. Sirf is schedule se jawab dijiye.
Check: Click the number next to the answer to see the line in the schedule, and compare the dose and the days yourself. A wrong number costs money or burns the fruit.
- 2
A photo check of a sick leaf or fruit
Open Farmit, SKUAST-K’s e-Plant Health Clinic app or Plantix, and photograph the leaf in daylight — close, in focus, both sides. Take three photos from three different trees.
In the app: photograph the leaf → read the likely problem → then ask in the chat: “Is this apple scab or something else that looks like it? What would I see on the leaf and fruit if it were scab? Which stage of the spray schedule am I at?”
Check: If the three trees give three different answers, the app is unsure — and so should you be. Before buying any chemical, check it against this year’s SKUAST-K spray schedule, or show it to a scientist on the e-Plant Health Clinic’s video call.
- 3
The sums before you decide
Sell now or put the crop in cold storage? Plant high-density on one kanal? Give it your own numbers and ask for the working.
I have [number] boxes of [variety]. Today’s rate at the mandi is ₹[rate] a box. Cold storage costs ₹[cost] a box a month, and I expect ₹[later rate] in [months] months. Work out what I would get each way, show every step, and list the risks that are not in the numbers.
Check: Do the main sum again on a calculator. The working is what matters — if a step is missing, ask for it.
In Kashmir
Built for Kashmir’s orchards
- Farmit, by the Kashmiri company Qul, builds a spray schedule from your orchard’s age, density and stage on SKUAST-K’s package of practice, and its AI chat answers in Urdu or English.
- SKUAST-K’s e-Plant Health Clinic app (launched May 2026) adds what no chatbot can: a live video call with a university scientist, so you can show them the tree.
- The schedule changes with the weather, year to year and even mid-season — in May 2020 SKUAST-K changed its scab advice for the pea-size stage after a wet spell. An AI that learned last year’s schedule will tell you last year’s advice.
- A chatbot does not know whether it will rain on your orchard tomorrow. For spray days, use a forecast: IMD’s Meghdoot app gives district advisories every Tuesday and Friday.
Keep the trust
A photo diagnosis is a first guess. Check the schedule and a person before you spend.
Apps are trained on pictures, and many diseases look alike in a photo — scab, a nutrient shortage and spray burn can all start as dark spots. A wrong guess means the wrong chemical, sprayed at the wrong time, on a crop you will sell.
- Before any spray: this year’s SKUAST-K schedule, and if unsure, the Horticulture Development Officer or the e-Plant Health Clinic video call.
- Never mix chemicals because an app or a chatbot suggested it. Mixing is a scientist’s decision.
- Keep your own record: date, what you sprayed, the dose, the weather. That record is worth more than any app.
Tools
Examples to try, not recommendations. Where the data is sensitive, prefer the ones that keep it on your own computer.
Made in Kashmir
- Farmit by Qul
Orchard spray schedules on SKUAST-K’s package of practice, AI chat in Urdu and English, crop-stage check from a photo.
- SKUAST-K e-Plant Health Clinic
Photo diagnosis of disease, pests and deficiencies, plus live video calls with SKUAST-K scientists. Android and iOS.
From the rest of India
Open source
- Farmer.Chat (Digital Green) Open source
An open farm assistant that answers from trusted extension material and farmer-to-farmer videos — Hindi today, not yet Urdu or Kashmiri.
Also on your phone
- SACHET
NDMA’s alert app: warnings for your district, including thunderstorms and heavy rain, from IMD.
- Google Lens
Point it at a pesticide label in English to read it in Urdu or Hindi — then check the dose against the schedule.
- AgroStar
Crop advice and inputs delivered to the village, in several Indian languages.
Watch next
High-Density Apple Harvesting Peaks
Kashmir Life
A high-density grower in Pinjoora, South Kashmir, in his own orchard: why his crop is ready two months early, and what changed (12 minutes).
Kashmir Apple Farming A–Z
Md. Yusuf, apple grower in Pahalgam
A grower’s own walk through the year, start to finish — the knowledge any app has to be checked against (7 minutes).
Go further
- SKUAST-K launches AI-driven plant health clinic
Kashmir Reader, May 2026
What the new app does and how the video calls with scientists work.
- Making Kashmir ‘Qul’
Global Indian
How Khuram Mir built Qul with 15,000 growers — the company behind Farmit.
- SKUAST-Kashmir
The university
The package of practice and the season’s advisories come from here.