Australia's largest chilli grower is deploying new digital pest surveillance technology on its four Bundaberg farms.
Subscribe now for unlimited access to all our agricultural news
across the nation
or signup to continue reading
AustChilli is working with agtech company RapidAim, with the project presented at this week's Hinkler Innovation Series.
RapidAim provides farmers with real time information on pest management, allowing growers to identify and eliminate pests immediately, without relying on chemical-based solutions.
The technology identifies the movement of an insect - like a fingerprint - sending that data directly to farmers' pockets through the RapidAim mobile app.
The company was born out of the CSIRO in an effort to fight one of the world's biggest threats to horticulture, the fruit fly.
Fruit flies attack commercial crops laying eggs inside ripe fruit and vegetables, causing them to rot and drop to the ground.
The Department of Agriculture estimates they attack more than 300 species of fruit and vegetables across Australia, costing the agricultural industry millions.
Working with CQUniversity, RapidAim will monitor its thirty point grid spread across AustChilli's farms in an effort to reduce the use of chemicals.
AustChilli's agtech and production coordinator Gerry Clancy said fruit flies cause "a lot of destruction to our crop and they create a situation where we are constantly spraying for them".
"From a food safety point of view, we use the insecticide products that are safe to use but as a general rule the less chemical we use on a crop the better," he said.
Mr Clancy said the technology marries well with other preventative measures AustChilli has taken.
"The system that RapidAim has compliments our existing strategies and makes the job easier because it is constantly counting," he said.
"No matter what strategies we now take, RapidAim will tell us if what we're doing is effective."
RapidAim CEO and co-founder Dr Nancy Schellhorn said the technology will give farmers greater confidence on the safety of their crop and cause less reliance on insecticides.
"Pest-management is a guessing game, pests are really small and they often show up at night," she said.
"They show up and they're in the crop before growers even know damage has been done.
"What RapidAim does is it allows growers to have confidence in whether or not they have a problem, and if they do have a problem it tells them where it is."
"Fruit fly is the biggest biosecurity barrier to trade globally and that's where we have started."
Dr Schellhorn compared the data RapidAim provides to weather forecasting, saying farmers no longer need to rely on old rain reports to decide "if they should wear suede shoes today".
"All the current information is about what happened last week, and then you try and make a decision today, so to be able to have real-time information you get a much better forecast," she said.
Mr Clancy agreed and said the fly traps would lessen the workload and prevent arduous fly counting that is traditionally relied on to get a sense of the current fruit fly threat.
"The beauty with this is that it gives us real-time monitoring of what is happening," he said.
"There is a saving in time and there is probably a more accurate count."
