5 Detection and Diagnostic Services

Transcript

Hello!! Welcome to the final talk f the week and that is Detection and diagnostic services. In this particular talk will be focusing on the Detection and diagnostic services that has been made available to farmers and growers at various levels and we all know that why this services are required because pest and diseases are responsible about 30% of crop losses annually globally. And Plant clinics have been helping farmers in reducing such losses. So that is why we need to have a proper Detection and diagnostic service system at various levels to help the farmers to reduce such losses. Plant doctors occasionally need expert support from plant health diagnostic laboratories to accurately diagnose plant health problems that are difficult to identify. There are many complex situations prevail in the field situation and many a times visual or initial observation of the disease problem may not lead to accurate diagnosis of the problem and that is why it need to be confirmed at laboratory level and that is how the diagnostic services are essential. Diagnostic services may be present at Agricultural institution level, Private company level, National Level and Global level. So people are developing different diagnostic services at various levels to help the growers minimize their loss.

So, Diagnostic services at agricultural universities if we just see, then globally all of universities they have their own diagnostic services including universities in India so they the growers to identify the cause of the problem and they also recommend the possible remedies for that cause. So at universities or agricultural institutions level diagnostic services has been provided to the growers at various countries. Then there are certain private sector services which also provide diagnostic services to growers, they go for molecular detection of the causal agent and so that they can have proper diagnosis of the problem and then have a remedy for the problem.

Diagnostic services provides at the diagnostic centres – Identification and diagnosis of plant diseases, Screening of water, soil and nursery potting mix for plant pathogens, because plant pathogen may be present in water, soil or even the nursery potting mix. Then Fungicide trials for evaluating chemical and biocontrol products, Seed testing for plant pathogens and Consultancy on planning for reduction in pathogen population then finally Disease control advice. So these are some of the services that are offered by plant diagnostic, disease diagnostic centres and they are helping the growers but there are challenges which needs to be addressed as we know that worldwide there are approximately 500 million are present and they provide food for two-thirds of the earth’s growing population. This is highly significant. So, achieving a zero hunger world by 2030 it all depends on by increasing the productivity of these small holder farmers and but their crops face a significant threat. So, yearly an estimated of 40% crops grown worldwide are lost to pest. So these small farm holder farmers they are providing food to 2/3 population of the world and they are facing an endanger of 40% crop loss. So this is the major challenge how to provide proper support to these small farm holders so that they can have proper saving of their produce and therefore they can supply food to the globe. The lack of access to timely, appropriate and actionable extension advice makes it a fundamental challenge to farmers to get right information at the right time to reduce crop losses. So it is imperative to provide necessary extension service to the farmers initially by diagnosing the problem and then giving the solution to the problem so that they are able to minimize their crop loss and feed the world.

There are certain global solutions one is plantwise. It is basically a global programme led by CABI. It helps farmers lose less what they grow and they are providing great service to the small farming holders, it is kind of a global plant clinic which works in a network mode. It is trained by doctors where farmers can find practical plant help advise. Farmers can visit with their samples and plant doctors can solve their problems and make science base recommendations on ways to manage it. So, it is just like a human clinic where patients visit the doctor. Here isn’t of the patients the plants are the patients and the growers bring this suffering plants to the plant clinics were a train plant doctors they diagnose the problem and give solutions to the farmers. The plant clinic network is reinforced by the Plantwise Knowledge Bank, this is a gateway to practical online and offline plant health information, that includes diagnostic resources, best[1]practice, best management advice and plant clinic data analysis for targeted crop protection. So just as the human doctors give suggestions to the patients this plant clinic work in a network mode and they are facilitated by a knowledge bank which help them to diagnose the problem properly and to recommend the best practice for management of the pest that is recommended.

It has a wider context along with giving advice to the small farm holders because it also strengthen the national plant health system by bringing together different people who play a role in delivering knowledge to farmers. It includes extensionists, researchers, educators, policy makers, agricultural input suppliers, farmer organizations, NGOs and many more. So the plantwise is not only plant clinic equipped with plant doctors. This particular platform also strengthening the national plant health system in any countries where it is under operation. Since its launched under 2011, Plantwise has supported over 30 million smallholder farmers across the world with the knowledge they need to lose less of what they grow to pests and diseases, increasing food security and improving rural livelihoods. So it is in one way it has done a commendable job so far, from 2011 onwards it has provided service to over 30 million small farm holders. Another global service offered by the EPFL and Penn State University and that is known as plant village which is a deep learning app that diagnoses crop diseases. So scientist at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and Penn State have developed a computer algorithm to identify crop diseases with extremely high accuracy. The algorithm when incorporated in a smart phone app help farmers prevent future food shortages. So, the app is helping farmers to identify or diagnose the problem and also find a remedy based on this diagnosis. The app consists more than 53,000 images of diseased and healthy plants and this was fed into the network and trained personnel to recognize patterns in the data. Based on recognition of pattern of the data the app can or the algorithm can identify a healthy plant or a diseased plant and it can also give a output in the form of a information that this affected plant is because of this particular disease. Neural networks provide a mapping between an input, such as an image of a diseased plant, to an output such as a crop disease pair. So the system works on the same technology like Facebook where it can identify a user by analyzing an uploaded photo. So, in the same way the Facebook works, this particular app also or algorithm also works in a manner.Once the photograph is uploaded it compares it with the existing photographs and then it comes out with an information of possible causal agent of the disease and therefore a viable recommendation can be made out of this output. Within the PlantVillage data set, the model achieved an accuracy rate as high as 99.35% which is very high that means 993 output are accurate out of 1000 images. So this is a very high rate of success and it is been very popular and that is why and is been used globally.

Nuru – is an Artificially Intelligent (AI) in the Plant VIllage system that has been developed to diagnose multiple diseases in Cassava like, fall armyworm, infections in African Maize, potato diseases and wheat diseases. So Nuru is an Artificially Intelligent system, that is part of the pant village programme that is able to identify certain diseases and particularly helping the growers in the African countries. Then they also have Drones which take Images and videos by cheap, affordable drones so that extension workers in low income countries can rapidly measure disease pressure in smallholder farmer fields. So drones are also providing services to diagnose the diseases in small farm holding farmers and because of their economical nature of the drones it can be used any wherein the globe with a minimal cost.

Then there is a Mobile Spectrophotometry device that has been developed based on nanotechnology and this spectrophotometer has been built to diagnose viral infections in cassava even when the plant looks healthy. Mobile Spectrophotometry can provide rapid disease diagnostics in the field, in real time. So this is another arm or ammunition one can say in the plant village system where it is helping the small farm growing holders to immediately identify a problem and that is how they can take up adequate measures for controlling or managing it. The another app that is developed that is known as Plantix is a free mobile applications which offers farmers and gardners the possibility to receive decision support directly on their smartphone. Due to image recognition this app is able to identify the plant type as well as the appearance of the possible disease pest or nutrient deficiency. So this can be downloaded to any smartphone this Plantix app and one can only take a snap of the disease plant and then with the help of this app its image is compared and then an output is given based on the diagnosis of the possible regions for that particular disease of the plant and the farmers or growers can very well follow the recommendations that has been given by the app. Its born in a Amazon forest Plantix mobile app is helping farmers on three continents quickly identify plant disease using artificial intelligence. Farmers in Germany, Brazil and India using this particular Plantix to upload photos of diseased crops. The images are part of a huge and growing crowd sourced database that is helping farmers to identify, treat and prevent crop diseases. So this is another way, these apps are working globally to help farmers to identify the problem of the diseased plants and based on this identification a proper recommendation can be given and adopting this recommendation can help farmers to basically grow for proper adequate measures to reduce crop losses. So with we come to an end to today’s talk as well as talks of this particular week and in the next week will be talking about conventional disease diagnostic methods that are been adopted in plant disease diagnosis. Thank You so much for being with us for this week will see you in the next week.

Thank You.