Agri-Health wins Rep. Wiley Nickel’s 2023 Congressional App Challenge in North Carolina’s 13th District

When asked what inspired the creation of Agri-Health, the students said, “When we were brainstorming for an app idea, we wanted to create something that was highly impactful as well as relevant to our background. After discussing several potential ideas we concluded that the topic of crop farming was the most impactful yet relevant as both of us have parents and grandparents who are farmers. I (Diego) recall having seen my grandfather struggling to distinguish between rice crops that suffer from pathogenic diseases in the leaves. As a result, this pathogen would spread and affect the yield produced. This would have a local impact, affecting the family finances as well as the municipality in which we lived, by creating less available products and causing an increase in price for the contaminated crop.  

Moreover, my partner (Han) also recalls having to undergo similar circumstances, where diseases in corn were very prominent in his local town. The tedious task of manually checking for diseases would often lead to neglect and the loss of most of the yield. Similar to my example, this resulted in reduced production, financial resources, and an overall heightened struggle for his locality. Creating an app that detects these issues quicker, cheaper, more accessible, and without the hassle of having to do it manually would improve the likelihood of treating them in time. 

Corn is essential to not only Wake County but to the state and nation as a whole. Corn is the primary ingredient in livestock feed as well as ethanol, and is considered to be the most consumed crop in the United States, being found in nearly every food product either as a sweetener or core ingredient. Therefore, it is essential to do the most to prevent a potential decrease in production, locally, nationwide, and internationally. Our app would facilitate this by providing an easy and accessible way to test the quality of crop leaves and therefore crops, preventing a potential decrease in crop yield and economic accessibility of corn.”