VEGES - A MULTILINGUAL EXPERT-SYSTEM FOR THE DIAGNOSIS OF PESTS, DISEASES AND NUTRITIONAL DISORDERS OF 6 GREENHOUSE VEGETABLES

Simple, plastic covered greenhouses are used widely in the Mediterrane an basin for the production of out of season vegetables such as auberg ine, bean, cucumber, lettuce, pepper and tomato, which account for ove r 50% (Spain and Italy) and 90% (Greece) of the total area of such gre enhouses. Despite the economic importance of this greenhouse industry to the region, its low technology (LT) status has so far failed to att ract the attention of the high technology (HT) software industry and i n consequence, appropriate, low cost HT products for LT greenhouse man agement are not currently available. In view of the above, the authors initiated a programme partly supported by the Greek Ministries of Edu cation and Agriculture for the development of HT software that is appl icable to the LT Mediterranean greenhouse industry. In this paper an e xpert system (ES) for the diagnosis and treatment of the pests, diseas es and nutrient disorders of the aforementioned vegetable species is p resented. The ES has been developed on a PC-based shell and will be di stributed to extension services and individual farmers for a nominal c harge, which is independent of the cost of development. For use in oth er regions of the Mediterranean, the system is accompanied by a new la nguage translation module which allows a non-specialist user (e.g. ext ension officer) to translate the knowledge base to the native language or dialect of the local farmers. The particular novelty of the ES is that it is a HT product that has been specially designed for use in a LT situation. The ES is cheap and, apart from a PC does not demand exp ensive hardware. It is thus readily applicable to the LT greenhouses o f the Mediterranean area where low production costs are of paramount i mportance. Moreover, because of the similarity of cultivation conditio ns within the Mediterranean basin as a whole, the language translation module extends the application of the product to the significant vege table production industry of southern Europe and northern Africa. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.