Researchers from the University of Lincoln created MAESTRO, an app that can recognize locusts and grasshoppers through a smartphone camera and GPS location. Farmers can use the app to record the location and volume of locusts for targeted delivery of pesticides to prevent the spread of swarms. The team wanted to help farmers identify and record locusts on land before they turn into airborne swarms.
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Eighteen million hectares of land are damaged by locusts every year. This impacts the productivity of a farm. Current monitoring techniques require field surveys where people are digging for insect eggs. This is only helpful for mid and long-term forecasting. This method can delay management measures.
The app puts more knowledge and power in the farmer’s hands. The team trained the app’s algorithm on 3,500 images of locusts. It also uses advanced computer vision technology.
The app’s framework can be used for other applications to capture and document key crop pests and diseases. The next stage for the team is to develop a cloud server to upload app data so the pest location can be identified in real-time.
A paper on this technology was published in Scientific Reports.
