About Pacific Pests, Pathogens & Weeds v11

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

In version 11, we have added 10 common weeds suggested by Fiji. We have looked to the horizon again and added several pests, mostly diseases, that are not yet in the region but are nearby; these include some nasty bacterial diseases of bananas and a potentially devastating fruit fly. Pests of root crops have been a focus, irrespective whether they are already in the region, nearby or far. These include a ‘mixed-bag’ of diseases caused by fungi, nematodes, phytoplasmas and viruses, and complete our world survey of major pests of important root crops. Finally, we include a further six insect pests, all from within the region, and a fact sheet on developing an Insecticide Resistance Management strategy.

The interactive key for “Identify Pests, Diseases & Weeds” has been redesigned; new states have been added to increase the chances of a successful pest identification.

Now the important task is to keep up to date with editing the information provided on all the pests in the app. Volunteers to help with this task will be welcomed!

A second change is the amalgamation of PestNet with the Pacific Pests, Pathogens & Weeds app. PestNet gives users access to a pest identification service, and advice on any other aspect of plant protection. It can be accessed from the front or the home page of the website or through the PestNet app, click here. From the Welcome page you can visit the submissions without joining, join (either through social media or by registering an email address and password), or login if you are already a member. It is that easy!

To use this App

Version 11 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, 3rd 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 2nd 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 10 of the App contains 504 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 to Pestnet to develop the App. It has done so under a sub-regional (Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu) IPM project (HORT/2016/185). We thank Identic Pty Ltd., (www.identic.com.au), creators of Lucid and Fact Sheet Fusion for publication of the App.

Software used

Lucid v4 was used to construct and manage the diagnostic key.

Fact Sheet Fusion v2.05.191 was used to manage the images and data and create fact sheets for both the web and mobile application.

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

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