User simply takes a photo of a plant to check if it has some issues
Our platform processes it to check for any issues it have
After scanning, we show the user if the crop is having the disease, which disease it is facing and ways for treatment and prevention tips

Inspiration

What it does

PlantGuard: Helping Farmers Protect Their Crops

Inspiration

Growing up in Rwanda, I saw how small-scale farmers struggled with low production. My grandmother was a subsistence farmer, relying on her crops for food and income. One year, her entire harvest was ruined by a plant disease she didn't know how to cure. She had no access to expert advice, and all her efforts went to waste. This made me realize that many farmers face the same problem—crop diseases destroy their harvests, and they have no reliable way to diagnose or treat them.

What I Learned

From this experience, I learned that lack of knowledge and access to agricultural support is one of the biggest reasons for low crop production in Rwanda. Many farmers work hard but lose their harvests due to preventable diseases. I started researching how technology could help solve this problem.

Building the Project

I decided to create PlantGuard, an AI-powered system that helps farmers identify crop diseases and provides them with possible solutions. I trained a machine learning model using images of healthy and diseased plants. The model can analyze a picture of a crop and tell the farmer what disease it has and how to treat it. I built the system using:

Python & TensorFlow for training the AI model
Flask for creating a simple web application
MongoDB for storing disease data and solutions

Challenges Faced

Building this project was not easy. The biggest challenges were:

Getting enough training data: Finding quality images of diseased plants was difficult.
Model accuracy: The AI sometimes misidentified diseases, so I had to fine-tune it.
Internet access for farmers: Many rural farmers don’t have stable internet, so I had to think of an offline version.

Conclusion

PlantGuard is a step toward helping Rwandan farmers increase their production and reduce crop loss. By providing quick disease diagnosis and treatment options, farmers can save their crops before it's too late. This project is still growing, and I hope to improve it so that every farmer, no matter where they are, can protect their harvests.