DESIGNING MODELS FOR THE PACKAGES OF PRACTICE OF CROP PRODUCTION TO DEVELOP A REAL TIME MOBILE- BASED INFORMATION SYSTEM IN SRI LANKA

Agriculture plays an essential role in developing countries and is the backbone of the Sri Lankan financial system, with many small holdings. At present, farmers face key challenges, including unsatisfactory yield, high cost of production, inability to promptly gather crucial  information for farming activities at the right time, inappropriate knowledge delivery methods, and low quality of agro-technology. On the other hand, the novel COVID-19 pandemic has further worsened the severe problems of malnutrition and nutritional  deficiency by significantly disrupting the local food supply system. Home gardening provides a solution for this, but not all gardeners are farmers, and the difficulty of finding  gardening instructions discourages newcomers from gardening. Therefore, delivering necessary guidelines and advisories through a convenient way is timely prerequisite activity  to address the challenges. The research study was conducted using Design Science Research (DSR) methodology with  the aim of increasing crop yields and promoting long-term sustainability of crop production by improving the mobile-based information systems based on the design models of the  packages of practice (POP). The intention of digitising the agronomy knowledge and experiences into PoPs for farmers and home gardeners was due to past survey records of  increased use of smartphones among people and their higher literacy rate. The preliminary survey was carried out with 100 farmers selected from Badulla, Nuwara-Eliya, and Jaffna districts. The initial study developed the decision support model that consisted of key points at each stage of the farming life cycle and designed the initial PoP artefact for commercial potato production using the information gathered through a structured questionnaire, formal and informal discussions, and observations. A second field visit was made to the Monaragala district, and information was collected from 35 participants, including farmers, agriculture instructors, and subject knowledge experts, to develop PoP for commercial brinjal  production. The same PoP format was followed to develop commercial big onion production using the data gathered from relevant institutions. The study further extended to develop PoP workbooks for 35 home garden crops considering conventional and organic ways of  production. The artefacts were modelled for crop and variety selection based on agro ecological regions  (AERs) and seasons, and covered all activities from land preparation up to the post-harvesting stage of the farming life cycle. The PoP workbooks have been verified and validated by experts during a number of field visits and enhanced the artefacts in the design  cycle. A pre-tested Google form-based questionnaire was distributed among 32 home garden mobile app users to analyse knowledge satisfaction on PoP.  All selected users were delighted (p