Trap-Eye™ exceeds expectation of innovative tomato grower

HagdornTomaten, a family-run German tomato nursery, is embracing Trap-Eye™, the new cutting-edge sticky trap monitoring system. Employing AI to make IPM scouting automated, accurate, fast and affordable, it is delivering improvements to the whitefly control programme alongside efficiency savings.In the past the 6 ha tomato nursery, based at Hochdorf, on the edge of Strohgau north-west of Stuttgart, relied heavily on a hand-held image-based insect detection system to monitor whitefly on yellow sticky traps. “We installed 30 sticky traps per hectare,” explains Heiko Hagdorn. “These were hung in the crop every fifth row, at 10m spacing. On average it was taking 1.5 hours labour per hectare, per week, to walk through the crop and monitor the traps using this technology.”

Automatic pest detection 
“Trap-Eye™ is delivering a raft of benefits,” he says. “Easy to install, it produces very sharp, clear images aiding accurate, automatic pest detection. It is generating significant labour savings, and once installed the team simply periodically replace the yellow sticky traps.” “The key features that really stand out for us are the improved pest detection, reliable counting and clear data presentation on the online portal,” he says. “The system is working really well. Having installed it ourselves, we’ve been well supported by Biobest’s technical team.

Accurate pest mapping 
“With accurate maps of the pest population build up throughout the crop, we can now target the release of beneficial insects where they are needed. This is helping us optimise our whitefly control programmes and is also playing a part reducing our use of beneficial insects.”

Improved whitefly control
Summing up Heiko says; “The Trap-Eye™ image quality has exceeded our expectations, and thanks to that our whitefly control programme has become significantly more efficient.”  “This system does all the hard work. With very little input from us, we can view accurate whitefly monitoring data at any time on the portal, giving our team a clear picture of what is happening in the crop.”

More info; www.biobestgroup.com

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