A new online tool for identifying weed species of lowland rice in East and West Africa is available.
A new interactive tool to identify nearly 200 different weed species of lowland rice in East and West Africa has recently been made available, reported the Africa Rice Center (AfricaRice) in October 2012. The tool is built on a comprehensive knowledge base that can be accessed online at the AFROweeds website and offline on laptops and CD-ROMs or as an app on smartphones and tablet computers. The tool makes it possible to identify weeds via numerous diagrams.
The AFROweeds website is only available in French for the present. However, as the weeds can be identified by means of diagrams people with just a little knowledge of French can access the information. The app is already available in English and an English version of the website will be available shortly.
Fine-tuning of the app and production of the CD-ROM are underway. The CD-ROM should be finalised before the end of the year and can be obtained (free of charge) by request per e-mail to AfricaRice, while the app will be downloadable (free of charge) from the AFROweeds website once it is available.
The weed identification tool is the product of a 3-year project on “African Weeds of Rice” (AFROweeds), coordinated by the Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement (CIRAD – Agricultural Research for Development) and AfricaRice.
