International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) has proposed Leaf Color Chart (LCC) to detect the exact nitrogen level of paddy. LCC is used in the agricultural areas for recommending an accurate amount of nitrogen fertilizer. In practice, leaf color is compared with its corresponding color in LCC inside body shade with proper lighting conditions. An exact color calibration process is necessary for the digital dimension for interpreting leaf colors. The calibration process evaluates the performance with the operational lighting conditions and determines whether the crops need fertilizers.

Currently, farmers in Bangladesh use manual LCC to determine the amount of fertilizer. The main problem with this manual technique is that the determination of the amount is subjective. It can be affected by the daylight, by the farmer’s eyesight, or even by miscalculation due to illiteracy. Again, when fertilizers are overestimated and distributed in the field, the environment can be affected badly, and moreover, the trees can die. Therefore, we intend to develop a digital solution for Leaf Color Chart (LCC) which will be easily accessible to farmers in order to detect the Nitrogen level in a paddy field. Specifically, we aim

- To automate the fertilizer determination through LCC mobile application

- To auto-save data to enable a farmer to check how much fertilizers he/she has used previously.

- To prevent harmful effects to the environment by proper use of fertilizers.

- To train the farmers to use this new digital solution for their economic empowerment.

- To collect sufficient data and create a database for future researchers especially data scientists so that they can explore possible trends in fertilizer usage.

Published paper: Md. Moradul Siddique, Torikul Islam, Yeasir Arefin Tusher, Romana Rahman Ema, Md. Nasim Adnan, Syed Md. Galib, "Paddynet: An organized dataset of paddy leaves for a smart fertilizer recommendation system", Data in Brief, 2023, 109516, ISSN 2352-3409, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2023.109516.