When crop pests and diseases occur, farmers want help and advice immediately. They don't want to wait and in many cases they cannot wait. Unless they act quickly, the crop could be ruined.

This App gives extension staff and lead farmers all the information they need to treat the crop. If there is no way of saving a crop, the steps should help to prevent the problem occurring in the future.

What's new

We started a series of fact sheets on weeds in version 8, but only two were published. Now with version 9 there are another 30, chosen by Fiji, Samoa, Solomon Islands and Tonga, as those most important to agriculture. Additional fact sheets will follow as we consult with other countries, and there will also be fact sheets on weeds that are considered a threat from countries outside the region. We adopted a similar approach to the pests and pathogens.

To use this App

Version 9 gives you three ways to use the App. Choose any of the following to:

• Select 'Identify Pests & Diseases', as a quick way to reach a pest or disease diagnosis.
• Select 'Full Fact Sheets’', for detailed descriptions of pests and pathogens.
• Select 'Mini Fact Sheets', for summarised versions of the full fact sheets.

Identify Pests, Diseases and Weeds

Choose 'Identify Pests, Diseases and Weeds' and the LUCID key appears, divided into four windows. This provides you with ways of reducing the list of possible pests or diseases causing your problem.

• Crops. First click the restart button (left button at top of the four windows with opposing arrows). Click the + next to Crops (or the Expand Tree button, 3^rd from left). This opens up an alphabetic list of crops. Click in the box next to your crop of interest. Look at the top right window to see the list of fact sheets for the selected crop. You can collapse the list (click on – next to Crops or click on 2^nd button from left) and then go to the next question.
• Find a fact sheet? If you know you are dealing with an insect, disease or mite problem, for instance, then select the appropriate category.
• What do you see? Use this question if you have only seen damage or disease symptoms or you have detected either insects or mites.
• Where is it? Is the damage/organism above or below ground?

Throughout this search process you can see the fact sheets matching your selections in the window to the right. The windows below keep a tally on the Features Chosen (left) and the Entities Discarded (right) as you make your choices.

Once you have your selections in Entities Remaining, choose those that match your problem and review.

Full Fact Sheets

Choose 'Full Fact Sheets' and a list of available fact sheets is displayed alphabetically. Clicking the image opens the images only; clicking on the text icon opens the fact sheet, and clicking on the thumbnail opens the gallery of images for that fact sheet.

Each fact sheet is divided into several sections: common and scientific names, distribution, hosts, symptoms and life cycle, impact, and management. Version 9 of the App contains 471 fact sheets.

Note that each fact sheet can be searched, printed and saved as a PDF. Also, at the top of each fact sheet you can toggle between full and mini fact sheets, or return to the login page.

Choose 'Mini Fact Sheets' and you will have summaries of full fact sheets, and similar, search, print and PDF options.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank ACIAR, the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research for providing support in the development of the App under a sub-regional (Fiji, Samoa, Solomon Islands and Tonga) IPM project (HORT/2010/090). We thank Identic Pty Ltd., (www.identic.com.au), creators of Lucid and Fact Sheet Fusion for its development.

Software used

Lucid v3.6 was used to construct and manage the diagnostic key.

Fact Sheet Fusion v2.05.180 was used to manage the images and data and create fact sheets for both the web and mobile application.

The Pacific Pests, Pathogens and Weeds app (Android and iOS) was created via the Lucid Mobile Platform.

For more information on these tools please visit https://www.lucidcentral.org