Motivation
Cassava is the world’s third largest source of carbohydrate, and can grow in hostile conditions where other crops cannot, but has one major weakness: susceptibility to viral disease. Monitoring the spread of disease is essential in countries which depend on it as a staple crop, but the processes currently employed are expensive and slow.
Project aims
- Enabling all year round, real time disease surveillance using mobile phones.
- Automating pest and symptom measurements.
- Enabling rapid diagnosis of crop disease in fields based on crop images.
- Exploring the use of innovative low-cost spectrometry.
- Assessing the effectiveness of coupling mobile survey technology with the use of spatial-temporal modelling techniques to monitor and predict the spread of disease.