Farmers hook on to the net to reap a rich harvest

30-year-old Sandeep Khode gets expert agricultural advice by posting queries online at www.aaqua.org.

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Mumbai: IITians are helping farmers find answers to their crop problems. And they do this with SMSes.

Standing in the middle of his vineyard with a laptop in hand, 30-year-old Sandeep Khode is perhaps the face of the new techno-savvy Indian farmer, who gets expert agricultural advice by posting queries online at www.aaqua.org.

"This site helps me get good advice and is also a great way to keep a tab on the market," says Sandeep Khode, a grape farmer.

A Brainchild of IIT Bombay, aaqua (Almost All Questions Answered) does just what its name suggests, with advice on everything from how to improve your crop to tips on marketing the produce.

"The idea was to bridge the technological divide,” says Prof Krithi Ramamritham, Dean, R&D, IIT Bombay.

Farmers can register on the website free of charge. They can then post their queries in English, Hindi or Marathi. Experts at the agricultural universities answer the queries. They can even text their queries to the number 56767666.

The website also has a handy database of frequently asked questions. With nearly 4000 registered users, farmers from across the country have been logging into a whole new kind of Green Revolution.