THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In a huge relief to post graduate and PhD students in agriculture science, the Kerala Agricultural University’s College of Agriculture at Vellayani here has developed a web application that can provide top quality statistical support for research and save time in the completion of projects. Named GRAPES (General R based Analysis Platform Empowered by Statistics), the web application based on open source software was developed by Pratheesh P Gopinath, assistant professor, Department of Agricultural Statistics during lockdown.
GRAPES provides wide range of data analytics methods and can generate top quality graphs for projecting the research outputs in the most appealing way. Besides, it provides the same features offered by costly proprietary data analysis software. “Agricultural research is one of the areas where statistical analysis plays a huge role. Lack of statistical support affects the quality of the research output. Statistical genetics analysis, for instance, is very important to develop high yielding varieties,” Pratheesh told TNIE.
GRAPES is platform-independent and can be used via mobile, laptop or tablet. It helps plant breeders perform their analysis that usually require heavy statistical calculations. Research students, who are struggling to find a statistician for research data analysis, will benefit a lot through the application.
Will benefit other disciplines
Since the application is built on open source, it can be provided free of cost to researchers across the country and can be used in any field of research. GRAPES can be used for research in Social Sciences and Medicine. Customised tools can also be developed and added to it.