Day 45: Warangal – Discussions and Explorations Around Chilly

We are in Telangana, one of the newest states of India. It was earlier a part of Andhra Pradesh, but since recently has formed a new state, yet shares the state capital with Andhra Pradesh, similar to how Haryana and Punjab share Chandigarh as a state capital. So not a first occurrence for India. Telangana is one of the major growers of paddy and cotton, and it is also a major contributor to India’s chili production. Something that was very noticeable today.

Welcome to Day 1 in Telangana. We are in Warangal today for our drone demonstration in a calm paddy field. Attendees included over 100 farmers, the agriculture department’s team, some of Syngenta’s field team and even the local media showed up to cover the event since this was something interesting that was happening in Telangana for the first time.

We completed the demonstration successfully, post which our interaction with the farmers started. One interesting question came up is from some chilly farmers that were attending the event. Chilly has a lot of flowers, and more the flowers that stay on, the better the chilly yield. Looking at the way the drone sprays and the fan pressure that is exerted, they were concerned if this would damage the chilly plant during the flowering stage, resulting in lower yield.

This would only be possible to showcase once a drone spray test is conducted on a chilly farm. We took due note of it and tried to schedule it in our future demos. Let’s hope that it does work out. Stay tuned to know if we succeed.