Fungi can devastate crops quickly and spraying them can quickly add up.
If you're spending that money, you want to know it's going to work - but how do you know if you need to spray your crops before it's too late?
Farming Smarter is researching the effectiveness of spore trapping as a cost-effective way of predicting disease infections before they take over your crops.
In June, we placed spore traps in our trial fields. This was ahead of the window of disease susceptibility for our target crops (wheat, canola, dry beans). The spore traps let us determine if pathogens for target disease are present. The pathogens we're looking for are stripe rust, fusarium head blight, and sclerotinina/white mould.
This research will give farmers another tool to determine whether fungicide applications will be necessary.
Equipped with removeable "cassettes," Sporenado spore traps are ready to help you protect your fields. 20/20 Seed Labs test the cassettes sent to them for pathogens, so you know if your crops are safe or if it's fungicide time. The Farming Smarter research team has been conducting weekly visits to exchange the cassettes at our trial fields and send them off for disease testing. We hope this technology can prove effective for supporting farmers with a cost-effective tool in fighting crop fungicides,
Farming Smarter looks forward to bringing you more results with this research as the trials end. To learn more about spore traps, check out these resources below:
Spore Trap Project