The two-year trial at Pukekohe involving BioScout units aims to help growers make better disease management decisions. Photo: Supplied
A new device is helping growers detect diseases out of thin air.
The two-year trial at Pukekohe involving BioScout units aims to help growers make better disease management decisions.
Three of the shoe box-sized units have been set up by Te Ahikawariki Vegetable Industry Centre of Excellence (VICE) with support from Vegetables New Zealand Inc, Onions NZ and Potatoes New Zealand.
They sit upon a stand and are powered by solar panels. A small intake on the front of the machine collects air samples which pass over a bit of tape.
Daniel Sutton, research development and extension manager for Vegetables New Zealand, explained a microscopic camera take images of the particles - such as pollen or fungal spores - which are stuck to the tape and then analysed by artificial intelligence to see if they carry disease.
"What we're doing is using this tool to evaluate the amount of disease spores in the air and we're looking at ground truthing that in terms of the range of different vegetable crops that we grow in the area - potatoes, onions, lettuce, brassicas, carrots and the like," Sutton said. "We're trying to evaluate what we're seeing in the machine versus what we're seeing in the crop."
Sutton said this tool would help "fill in the gap" around the pathogen and provide a continual flow of information of what disease is around and how much of it.
"Disease infection 101 is you need a susceptible host, you need the environment to be favourable for the disease to infect and you need the pathogen to be present."
He said it will help them identify some of the "big" diseases like target spot in potatoes and white mould in carrots.
It was an "exciting" example of how technology was helping the sector.
Sutton said, if they worked as expected, the hope was to establish a network of such BioScout units across major vegetable growing regions in the country.
There are about 20 such units across the country, with arable farmers and grape growers having also adopted the tech.
"If they can all talk and connect to one another than we'd actually have a nationwide network looking for these key diseases for us."
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