A plant doctor in every farmer's pocket
“The most satisfying part has been to make a difference in the lives of the poorest people on the planet.”
— David Hughes, PlantVillage founder
The problem David Hughes faced
Cassava feeds over half a billion people a day in Africa. It gets sick slowly — a farmer can't tell which disease is on the leaf until it's already spread to the neighbor's farm. Trained experts are few and far away.
What the project does about it
A free phone app called Nuru — "light" in Swahili. Point the camera at a leaf. In seconds the AI names the disease, over 90% accuracy, better than trained human extension agents in field tests. It runs fully offline on cheap Android phones. No signal, no cloud, no cost. Then it tells the farmer what to do about it.
Who this helped
David Hughes, PlantVillage founder — in their own words, above.