OnionGuard

OnionGuard is an AI-powered mobile app that helps onion farmers detect crop diseases early so they can protect yields and reduce losses. Using your phone camera, OnionGuard analyzes photos of onion plants and instantly flags common problems such as Alternaria, Bulb Blight, caterpillar damage, Fusarium and virosis, then offers recommended treatments. Farmers and extension officers will find the app useful because it runs its machine learning model on-device, works without internet, supports local languages and stores scan history to track field health over time—making rapid, informed decisions easier during the growing season.

Key Features

⭐ Instant disease detection on-device: take a photo and get a fast diagnosis for common onion ailments.

⭐ Treatment recommendations: receive practical, disease-specific advice to help manage infections and pests.

⭐ Voice support in preferred languages: listen to step-by-step treatment instructions for field use.

⭐ Scan history and analytics: track past scans, monitor trends and watch crop health evolve over time.

⭐ Freshness assessment: evaluate the quality and market-readiness of harvested onions.

⭐ Offline operation and multilingual support: OnionGuard runs without internet and includes English plus local languages.

Advantages

✅ Early detection reduces the risk of large harvest losses by enabling quicker interventions.

✅ On-device AI means the app works in remote fields without a data connection.

✅ Designed for smallholder needs: useful for individual farmers, extension officers and farm administrators tracking multiple users.

✅ Scan history and analytics help farmers make data-driven decisions about treatment and harvest timing.

Disadvantages

❎ Limited to onion crops and the set of diseases the model has been trained to recognize; other pests or conditions may not be identified.

❎ Initially developed for the Upper East Region of Ghana, so some recommendations or recognition may be optimized for local varieties and growing conditions.

Development Team

OnionGuard was developed to support smallholder farmers in the Upper East Region of Ghana, with a focus on accessible, on-device machine learning, local language accessibility and practical field tools for disease management.