Agricultural expert systems in Egypt; Its production, availability, and benefit from it: a descriptive and analytical study in the governorates of Gharbia and Minya. 2

Abstract

This study seeks to identify agricultural expert systems in terms of their components, stages of creation, and construction tools, and then study the history of agricultural expert systems and their development in the Arab Republic of Egypt. It also aims to identify the elements of expert systems that benefit farmers and agricultural extension workers, and the patterns of dealing with them. In this context, the study followed the descriptive analytical approach to survey the opinions of a sample of farmers and agricultural extension workers. The study concluded that there is a strong relationship linking farmers’ benefit from agricultural expert systems and the farmers’ educational level, age, agricultural tenure, farmers’ ownership of computers, and farmers’ use of computers. Automation, and farmers’ dealings with the Internet. The study also showed that there is a relationship between benefiting farmers and agricultural extension workers and the features of different agricultural expert systems. The study recommends the need to develop agricultural expert systems and make them available on the Internet, the need to make agricultural expert systems available for a larger number of agricultural crops, the need to increase financial support for the agricultural extension sector, and the need to inform and introduce farmers, extension workers, researchers and agricultural specialists to the site of the virtual research and extension communication network and agricultural expert systems.