A new tool, which claims to track and monitor disease in the field, via pathogen detecting sensors, has recently gone into commercial production.
Pitching his business to investors at the AgriFutures Australia EvokeAg conference, BioScout CEO and engineer Dr Lewis Collins said the disease platform was a world first.
"Cropping at the best of times is a challenging and risky business, and crop disease makes it just that much harder," he said.
"Australian farmers are using more than $2.5 billion in chemicals to protect their crops, but are still losing upward of 20 per cent of their yield to disease every year.
"Obviously disease management is not keeping up with modern farming needs."
While these figures are obviously inflated and include other crop protection products, including herbicides and insecticides, along with soil-borne disease, Dr Collins went on to say there was no way to detect disease before it became symptomatic on the crop.
"Once you see it, it is often far too late to do something about it," he said.
Again, this statement applies to only certain diseases, however Mr Collins said this meant farmers needed to spray prophylatically, to prevent disease.
"To protect your crop you have to be continuously spraying at regular intervals at high cost, while not even knowing if that $20,000 spray is even going to work," he said.
"And it is not guaranteed what works one year, will work the next, because of changing disease resistance due to over-spraying, changing environmental pressures and different government regulations which limit the use of chemistry."
Investor-pitch hyperbole aside, should it work, the BioScout platform would fit high-value crops with significant air-borne disease issues.
Dr Collins said the system involved the use of patented sensor technology which monitor the field 24 hours a day.
"They monitor the presence of microscopic particles that cause infections, while also monitoring weather conditions to work out when an outbreak is likely to occur," he said.
"As soon as we detect the disease we alert the farmer through a quick text message alert, telling them what disease, where it is and what it is going to do.
"We also offer a dashboard that allows you to get into historical trends and disease loads on the farm."
Dr Collins said testing of the product had so far gone well.
"We have been trialling since March last year," he said.
"In a banana farm we showed a high correlation between what we were picking up and the agronomist in-field assessments.
"We actually provided enough data to do another spray, because we detected a higher amount of disease innoculum.
"In another blueberry trial we showed clear asymptomatic disease detection, picking up a botrytis outbreak, nearly two weeks before it became symptomatic in the field."
While diseases require three things to become established infections - a suitable host crop, specific environmental conditions and the presence of a pathogen, the BioScout could have significant implications for biosecurity.
"We are passionate about helping Australian farmers manage disease and improve biosecurity," he said.
