Chennai, May 3, 2018: Mr.Kannappan, Research and Development Engineer with the IEC programme area of MSSRF, recieved the First Prize in Oral presentation under  Agrobiodiversity, Soil and Water Management theme in the 9th IYSC held at Hamirpur, Himachal Pradesh. The three day congress was held from April 7-9, 2018.

Below is the abstract of his presentation.

Abstract 

Raspberry pi based Wireless Imaging system for Pest Monitoring

This study focuses on designing a Raspberry pi based remote pest monitoring system. At farm level, pest population levels during crop season are routinely monitored by means of adhesive traps disseminated through the field at appropriate spatial density, when insects remain stuck when attracted into by color appearance or odorous baits like sex pheromone. This task requires repeated surveys in the field with visual observations of traps and recording of the number of insects captured by a human operator. Being these survey process a highly laborious and time consuming operation, they are unlike to be conducted at the necessary monitoring frequency, often yielding poor results, significantly affected by observer’s skill or fatigue, or by surveying conditions. The on-going developments in new micro, low cost imaging devices and in wireless communication technology could give a valuable contribution in facing automatic monitoring of pest insects by establishing a camera able to remotely assess the adhesive traps captures in the field. A statistical analysis is made on the probable time of high pest population and a trap with three layers of different thickness is designed to capture various sizes of prominent pests. A low-cost image capturing device is used to capture the images of trapped pests and the images are sent to a remote control station by Raspberry pi. The information thus acquired enhances the estimation of pest concentrations in farms. Through that images Agriculture scientists can analyse type of pests from the lab itself and they can give affordable suggestions and remedies to surrounding area farmers.