The interviews and reporting for this story were conducted in February 2024.

Weeds pose a significant problem for farmers, substantially reducing harvest yields if not addressed on time. The ICAR-Directorate of Weed Research (ICAR-DWR), Jabalpur, estimated that the total losses caused by weeds amount to almost $11 billion per year across 10 major crops in India.

Effective weed management is therefore of prime importance, both in terms of productivity as well as for farmers’ incomes. However, the predominant method of manual weed removal is time-consuming, labour-intensive, and expensive. According to an ICAR-DWR report, weed management accounts for 20 to 25 percent of the total cultivation costs.

“I grow 20 types of vegetables on my farm and need to remove weeds every two weeks. Doing this by hand is expensive and hard work, especially with so many different vegetables, which leads to lots of weeds,” says Prashant T R, a farmer from Madurai.

The other methods of weed removal involve the use of weedicides or herbicides, which are chemicals sprayed on the field to eliminate weeds. Though this is effective, it has a long-term negative impact on the environment and the health of farmers.

Learning about this problem prompted Rahul Arepaka, an engineering student at Mahindra University in Hyderabad, to develop a solution. He built an AI-powered laser-weeding implement called ‘Rakshak’ through his company,........

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