Nabarun Bhattacharyya, head of Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) in India and Rajib Bandyopadhyay, professor at Instrumentation and Electronics Engineering Department of Jadavpur University, started their lecture with the idea that due to the constant growing of world population agriculture remains the main tool for feeding people and one of the most important parts of the global economy. By implementing new technologies one can increase output volume and the quality of products. New solutions can be applied at every step of agricultural process, from analyzing of soil composition to lab analyzing of harvest.
“Agriculture includes various activities, almost all of which can be upgraded with sensing technologies. Thus we can control temperature and air humidity changes as well as soil condition and other parameters to choose the most appropriate time for land amelioration or to detect the safe pesticides concentration. For all these purposes we can use electronic noses, biosensors and other solutions,” said Mr. Bhattacharyya.
The experts also talked about potentiometric sensor used for lab testing of liquids as well as electrochemical analysis of the environment. Thanks to infrared spectroscopy method one can detect the composition of natural compounds without affecting them. To detect plants affected by various illnesses farmers can use specific cameras with long optical zoom.
The head of C-DAC also focused on electromagnetic noses and tongues that analyze tastes and flavors of food products and plants that are used for producing perfumery products. Nabarun Bhattacharyya also underlined that most of these technologies have been commercialized and applied for industrial purposes such as development of high-grade products that meet customer needs.
Today the main way of checking the quality of tea-tree leaves is tasting. However, according to Rajib Bandyopadhyay, experts` opinion is subjective. To get more precise results tea industry should implement modern technologies. Using of electronic noses and devices based on infrared spectroscopy is an effective tool for detecting chemical composition of leafs and analyzing of their flavor. By using these devices experts can also detect tea products containing aromatizing agents.
