This app uses Google's machine learning platform to detect plant diseases

Among the various companies, non-profits and researchers using tech company Google's TensorFlow platform, one application that has caught the attention of developers at the internet giant is PlantMD. Created by high school students Shaza Mehdi and Nile Ravenell, the app can detect diseases in plants. The duo, who showcased the app at Google's I/O annual developer conference this year, built it based on the Internet company's open-source machine learning library for data programming--TensorFlow. "PlantMD's machine learning model was inspired by a dataset from PlantVillage, a research and development unit at Penn State University. PlantVillage created an app called Nuru, Swahili for'light', to assist farmers to grow better cassava, a crop in Africa that provides food for over half a billion people daily," Fred Alcober, a member of Google's TensorFlow team, wrote in a blog post. Cassava plants, wrote Alcober, though very tolerant of harsh weather conditions, is susceptible to pests and diseases.