Insect monitoring with an app? With xFarm, you can
Crop protection against pests is one of the key factors in order to obtain a satisfying yield in terms of quality and quantity. To create an effective and efficient protection strategy, it is necessary to constantly monitor the presence of pests in the field. Monitoring is, indeed, the first important step to make sure plant protection treatments are successful.
xFarm developed an innovative solution allowing farmers to be constantly updated on the presence of insect pests in their fields. Here’s what it is.
What is integrated pest management (IPM)?
IPM is an approach to plant protection which, exploiting all the available techniques, starting for the least impactful ones, aims to preserve the production by keeping pest density below the economic damage threshold.
IPM advantages are numerous, but they can be summed up in one word: efficiency. Through planned and focused interventions, it is indeed possible to control pests efficiently, minimizing costs, time spent and environmental impact.
The first step is monitoring
Monitoring is indeed the first step if you want to adopt an IPM strategy, but it requires quite a big investment in terms of time and labour. In fact, the farmer is obliged to visit its fields very frequently and, as for insect populations, to check traps in order to verify the number of captures occurred. Considering that monitoring is effective only if it is repeated in time, the total cost of these operations throughout the vegetative cycle can be huge.
xFarm solution to monitor insect populations
The solution developed by xFarm is composed by two elements: a series of automatic traps to be put in the field with some environmental sensors (hardware) and a software component analysing the collected data.
xFarm developed some specific traps for different kinds of insect pests:
- xTrap Delta: the monitoring trap xTrap Delta allows to automate insect capture and count, attracting them through a specific pheromone and then capturing them with a sticky sheet. A camera takes a picture of the captures and sends it daily to the xFarm app.
- xTrap Color: xTrap Color is meant for the monitoring of species attracted by specific colors. It is a chromotropic trap, attracting and effectively capturing insects thanks to a colored sheet covered in sticky material. Also in this case, a picture will be taken and sent daily to the xFarm app.
- xTrap Stink: through the monitoring trap xTrap Stink it is possible to automate the capture anc counting of stinky bugs which, after being attracted by a specific pheromone, are held inside the trap. A movement sensor allows to count the captured insects, and this number is then sent to the xFarm app.
By setting the traps inside the fields, you will need to visit your fields only when it is really necessary, saving time and money. Moreover, the pictures taken by the cameras will always be available in the app, thus creating a capture database which you will be able to use in order to monitor the insect populations evolution throughout the vegetative season.
Automatic count: thanks to AI, xFarm recognizes and counts insects
Through an image analysis system to recognize the insect species captured and count all the individuals, captures become a numerical value directly available inside the app. This is very useful in order to plan a plant protection strategy more easily and with more information available, also thanks to graphs and forecasting models.
The recognition and insect count functions is also compatible with Alerts, the moule allowing to get notifications and alerts when the insect population density exceeds the intervention threshold.
Advantages of monitoring with xTrap
- Saving time and money
- Standardizing the monitoring process
- Collection of useful data for the forecasting model
- Database with the captures trend season by season