TEAPEST: An Expert System for Insect Pest Management in Tea

Tea is one of the major crops of India and is grown over a large area. The loss of crop due to insects is one of the productivity barriers. Insect pest management is a challenging problem to tea cultivators. Proper identification of the insect pests, selection of chemical pesticides and their discriminate use, need human expertise, experience, and judgment. But, sufficient number of competent human experts are not available to cover the large area. To mitigate the lack of human expertise and assist the existing experts for improved decision–making, an expert system for insect pest management would be useful. This article presents a rule–based, object–oriented expert system for insect pest management in tea code named ‘TEAPEST.’ The system identifies major insect pests of tea and suggests appropriate control measures. ‘TEAPEST’ shows good performance as evident from its performance evaluation.