India, Jan. 31 -- It was the stem borer, an agriculture pest, that fuelled Mukund Choudhary, a tech engineer, and Maitree Dedhia, a design student, into action that would help farmers protect their crops from the relentless gnawing of the silent attackers. Seeing the farmers' struggle with the extremely difficult-to-detect intruders, both of them put their minds together to develop a non-destructive scanning system that beats all the existing ones in the pest-control field.

About stem borer

The stem borer and termites carry the (dis)reputation of being the most dangerous of pests as they work stealthily, giving detection the slip. According to the 'All India Coordinated Rice Project and Other Agricultural Studies', these pests cause mas...