Development of spores collector and identifier for plant diseases management

Abstract

Brazil is among the largest worldwide food producers, growing several species across the country, compounding one of the largest markets for agricultural products worldwide. The majority of the crops grown on the country suffer economical damage by several plant diseases, due to favorable weather and pathogen conditions. Weather stations are used to measure fluctuations on the environmental favorability, while pathogen condition is not known, as there is no product to make this activity easy. In the end of 2020 Smart Agri launched a spores collector device to quantify pathogens, acquired by several companies and cooperatives to compose collecting networks. The device has the function to allow analysis of the air inoculum source, focused on large distance dispersal pathogens. The customers ask during this period on the market are towards an automated device, this is the main objective of this project. Moreover, customers asks, the non-automatized device limit sellings due to the necessity of dedicated personnel to grab the slides and lately analyze them in a common microscope. The potential customers base is formed mainly by chemical and biological manufactories, cooperatives, consultants, researchers and growers, in this order of demand. The project has as objective to execute the development of a system with an innovative technology that allows collect and automated identification of spores directly on the field, without human intervention, in a viable cost for scalability. (AU)