By Nicolle Ritchie
Being able to innovate and adapt is important for farm success, but it can be overwhelming to make changes. A good tool or resource should make your life easier in some way. It might inform decision-making, simplify calculations or analyze and organize data in a practical way. It should be user-friendly, affordable and reliable or trustworthy. The following is a list of free tools and resources on improving pest forecasting, identification and monitoring. It is not an exhaustive list but a starting point.
Integrated pest management
Integrated pest management (IPM) is the use of multiple methods to control or manage a pest. IPM also depends on thresholds, which consider the economic cost of management and the need to manage the pest based on potential crop loss. Crop protection products, or pesticides, are a chemical form of pest management, and they are one of the more flexible costs for growers. Because IPM is so broad, these tools are subdivided into multiple categories. Read the article “Innovative agronomy tools and resources: Pesticides” for other IPM tools and resources.
Pest forecasting
Crop Risk Tool: A tool from the Crop Protection Network that predicts disease risk based on the weather forecast for corn, soybeans, wheat and more crops.
Vegetable Disease and Insect Forecasting Network: A tool from the University of Wisconsin—Madison that predicts disease and insect risks based on weather data.
MSU Enviroweather models: Available as a website or an app. Provides flight predictions and degree-day calculations for select pests using MSU Enviroweather stations throughout Michigan.
Pest ID and monitoring
PictureThis app: Weed identification app from Glority. Decently good at identifying broadleaf weeds. For more information on this and other weed identification apps, read “Plant identification? There’s an app for that—actually several!” Free and paid options.
Source : msu.edu