By combining Internet of things (IoT) camera and pheromone trap, the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO) has developed a technology that automatically captures and disposes of insect pests, and the images of captured pests are made available on the Internet. Conventionally, monitoring insect pest occurrence requires investigators for on-site investigation periodically (every 5-7 days) to count and dispose of insect pests. The newly developed technology will make it possible to collect insect pest occurrence data every day on the Internet in a labor-saving manner. This technology is expected to be applied to precise pest management based on a data-driven approach.
Overview
Information on the insect pest occurrence on the field is necessary for understanding the basic ecology of insect pests and determining the timing of spraying pesticides.In conventional monitoring of pest occurrence, pheromone agents (chemicals that attract pests of the same species) were used with plastic containers or sticky plates to capture and kill specific insect pests, and then investigators visually checked the number of captured pests. Thus, it was necessary for the investigator to visit the site directly to manually count the number of insect pests caught and then dispose of them. This investigation method was not only labor intensive but also difficult to accurately determine the population dynamics of moth species, which migrate on a daily basis.
To solve this problem, NARO has developed an IoT device with the function of sending images of captured pests every day by email and then automatically disposing of the captured pests. By applying this device, it is now possible to conduct pest monitoring without weekly on-site investigation. This technology will contribute to understanding the ecology of the migration and dispersal of insect pests flying over a wide area and the development of more advanced pest control methods, which result in the efficient spraying of pesticides in the right place at the right time.
Publication
Kawakita Satoshi, Sato Tatsuya,2023, Towards automatic monitoring of insect pests using IoT camera-equipped pheromone traps: a case study for Spodoptera litura (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae). Applied Entomology and Zoology
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13355-023-00830-z
