Detection of fungal diseases optically and pathogen inoculum by air sampling

Abstract

Practical solutions to measure temporal and spatial differences in the epidemics of specific fungal plant diseases are described here. For diseases that develop from widespread airborne inoculuminoculum, timing of disease control methods are key. Air samplingAir sampling, integrated with appropriate diagnostic methods can be used to identify and quantify the presence of pathogen inoculum in order to guide spray decisions. Where diseases are already established but with spatially variable severity (disease focidisease foci), spatially selective sprayingspatially selective spraying of crops is possible using different optical disease detectionoptical disease detection methods and knowledge of pathogen biology to estimate an area of latentlatent (invisible but developing) infection around disease foci. Spatially-selective spraying mediated by optical sensorsoptical sensors may also be beneficial when there are crop patches that have low yield potential due to other factors such as poor emergence, moisture or nutrient stress, or soil compaction. Precision agriculture methods to improve the efficiency of fungicidefungicide applications in terms of timing and selective spatial application can optimise the use of fungicidesfungicides in integrated crop production systems to provide the lowest environmental impactenvironmental impact per unit of produce while maintaining a high protection efficacy.