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Expanded MyCrop app a grain crop troubleshooter
Australia
June 19, 2014
The popular MyCrop diagnostic app has been expanded to include barley and canola, as well as wheat.
“The app enables quick identification of a range of crop production constraints including diseases, pests, nutrient deficiencies, herbicide damage and many others,” Department of Agriculture and Food (DAFWA) development officer and project leader Kelly Ryan said.
“With this timely information in the palm of your hand you will be able to diagnose constraints when you see them and not when they have already cost you."
Ms Ryan said the app had been developed by DAFWA with funding from the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC), and it consolidated decades of the department’s research and development on wheat, barley and canola production constraints.
“The app also works offline, so growers and agronomists can be standing in a crop looking at a symptom and be able to immediately and accurately diagnose what’s wrong, even in the most remote areas,” she said.
“At the heart of the app is an intuitive diagnostic key that quickly identifies crop constraints based on real-time crop and paddock symptoms.
“With disease, pest and nutrition issues accounting for a major proportion of production costs, using the MyCrop app to diagnose and overcome constraints quickly will save growers time and money.”
Key features of the MyCrop app include:
- extensive image library
- constraint ‘factsheets’
- more than 150 constraints ranging from pests and diseases to soil deficiencies and environmental and management factors
- can be used offline, so it will always work, even in the most remote locations.
Ms Ryan said the app was also a valuable education tool, offering young agronomists and agricultural students a centralised source of crop production information.
“The app contains a virtual library of hundreds of images and factsheets on specific wheat, barley and canola constraints, to aid diagnosis,” she said.
DAFWA senior development officer Doug Sawkins has worked on the MyCrop project since it started more than three years ago, drawing on his 40 years of agronomic experience to develop the diagnostic key system central to the MyCrop app and its online web version.
“The MyCrop project has been a valuable way to harness and integrate the huge amount of agronomic and diagnostic knowledge contained within the department,” he said.
To download the app visit Google Play at https://play.google.com and search for MyCrop, or visit iTunes at https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/mycrop/id767990432?mt=8. Look for the blue MyCrop icon.
More information about the MyCrop app is available at www.agric.wa.gov.au/mycrop.
More news from: GRDC (Grains Research & Development Corporation)
Website: http://www.grdc.com.au Published: June 19, 2014 |
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