High-tech scouting

You’ve refined the integrated pest management program, including a top-notch scouting team. But with the rigors of all the other production needs, pest and disease issues continue to be a problem. These companies offer products and services that lend extra help to your staff.

Trap-Eye

Trap-Eye from Biobest employs a web-based dashboard to provide growers and Biobest advisers with a full overview of the pest situation in the greenhouse from anywhere.

Sam Gui, Biobest market development manager, says this is the company’s “contribution in the field of technology and digital tools for the global sustainable production of high-value crops.”

Developed in collaboration with PATS, the solar-powered, fully automated Trap-Eye system takes pictures of sticky traps and uses AI to identify and count the most common flying pests, as well as beneficials such as Macrolophus. 

“This aids the digitalization of data,” Gui says. “Good IPM decisions follow data-driven advice. By generating accurate heat maps pinpointing pest hotspots, growers can concentrate introductions of beneficials appropriately and greatly improve IPM performance. Also, by helping to control pests earlier, Trap-Eye helps growers minimize production losses while reducing the need for chemical insecticides.”  

Pictures taken at a grower-defined interval are sent to a cloud where an AI system identifies and counts insects.

Biobest suggests installing 40 Trap-Eye devices per hectare (2.5 acres) for the network to deliver a good sample size of pest and beneficial insect situations in the greenhouse.

Ecoation IPM software

The team at ecoation, headquartered in North Vancouver, British Columbia, acknowledges that a scout’s time is valuable, and they can’t cover the entire greenhouse each week. To help fill the gaps in pest and disease analysis, ecoation’s IPM Forecast Maps provide growers with a tool to optimize scouting efforts and make informed decisions based on comprehensive data. 

The IPM Forecast Maps are generated by AI and are available to growers who utilize the ecoation OKO machine for scouting purposes. These AI-generated maps allow for better utilization of labor, time and treatments, ultimately enhancing the overall effectiveness of the IPM program. AI algorithms analyze vast amounts of data, detecting subtle signs of pest and disease infestations that may be missed by human scouts. This increases the accuracy of decision-making, helping growers respond promptly to emerging threats. By making decisions based on comprehensive data, growers can avoid unnecessary treatment expenditures caused by oversights or reactionary measures.

IPM Scoutek

The scouting app from Ontario-based IPM Scoutek allows scouts to see the current state of unresolved pest and disease pressures to ensure pressures are updated and nothing gets missed. It works with or without WiFi, it’s multilingual and it works on Apple and Android tablets.

It replaces excel sheets with detailed views of pressures, trends, action threshold alerts, scouting activity and applications. Users have their IPM data in one place and in real time. Users are able to predict outbreaks early, compare pest and disease pressures against action thresholds, track pressures targeting specific varieties or cultivars and identify pest and disease proliferation and migration with the heat map.

All application documentation is saved, which helps organize documentation for audits and planning reference. And application maps automatically identify treatment areas and total area affected.