Now Crops Have an App For That, Too
Hawaii’s unique climate and volcanic soils make it an ideal growing location for several distinctive crops, including coffee and macadamia nut. Despite being one of the most geographically isolated regions on the planet, Hawaii farmers must deal with a continuous onslaught of new pests and diseases that thrive in the tropical environment and threaten their livelihoods. Now, a team of ARS researchers at the Tropical Crop and Commodity Protection Research Unit in Hilo, HI, is providing growers with new apps to help manage these threats.
The Best Beans app helps growers monitor coffee leaf rust (a plant disease) and coffee berry borer (an insect pest), both of which cause significant crop damage. By providing detailed data on the levels and locations of these crop threats, the app provides growers with information that they can use to inform the appropriate timing of control measures, such as biopesticide applications and field sanitation. A second app, called MyIPM Hawaii, provides diagnostic, management, and other information on a wide variety of pests and diseases of crops grown in Hawaii, as well as recommendations for postharvest quarantine treatments of crops for export out of Hawaii. Together, these apps and others that the team is developing aim to provide growers in Hawaii with up-to-date, precise information needed to keep their crops healthy and the production of specialty crops viable in the islands.
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