Interaction

Farmers are facing various problems while cultivating a crop. So, they approach research organizations for better solutions. Hence, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can play a major role in giving timely solutions to farmers.

Among the various ICT tools available, computers with Internet are being widely used to provide solutions to farmers. Here, Content Management Systems can play a major role in giving the required information to the farmers. But a user takes much time in retrieving the information using content management systems. Hence, use of Ontology in Content Management can act as a solution for the above mentioned limitation by facilitating a fast search and retrieval of information by the user.

Ontology is the representation of various concepts and relationships between them. Concept maps and topic maps use ontology to represent relationships among various concepts and topics.

A concept map is a diagram showing relationships among concepts. These maps are used to generate new ideas and to aid creativity. A Topic Map is an ISO standard for the representation and interchange of knowledge, with an emphasis on the findability of information.

The present study is on developing the concept maps and topic maps for Sorghum crop. To develop the concept maps the open source software called Institute for Human and Machine Cognition was used. Three concept maps were developed with proper modification of terminology in relationships in each map. In third map AGROVOC relationships were used which showed good relationships among concepts. To develop a topic map, the open source software Topic Map for e-Learning was used. The topic maps are published in Omnigator where these maps can be vizigated. Omnigator facilites the view of associations and occurrences in the topic map.