Abstract:

Agri-food professional field work requires the continuous and immediate update on novel exotic invasive pests, alternative or banned chemical treatments, etc... as well as immediate access to databases and tools to assess pest damage, nutritional deficiencies or simply attain automated identification of cultivated varieties which has been made possible by implementing the use of modern smartphones and the availability of almost ubiquitous internet access through 4G (and the upcoming 5G). Smartphones enable the collection of information in different formats and the interrogation of available online databases in real time, which undoubtedly provides an excellent workflow for immediate and accurate decision making. Therefore, training such tools is nowadays a must for students in Agri-food engineering, first to learn the technological basis and the most interesting tools available and, moreover, to identify interesting tools in the future, even contributing to the development of new ones.

To attain this essential objective, we have focused:
i) on the use of specially designed infrared (IR) cameras that can be attached to the USB-C port of any smartphone
ii) a free online database for citrus orchard management, including identification of varieties, rootstocks, pests and diseases, that can be interrogated from a smartphone.

In this work, we have designed a formation plan intended for senior agri-food engineering students with proven knowledge in plant physiology, fruticulture and pest identification and management, included a guided tour through IR camera installation and software manipulation for in situ field evaluation of citrus plants transpiration and subsequent adjustment of watering regimes. Moreover, the database-assisted identification of citrus varieties under field conditions will be also included in this formation plan, using the specially dedicated app CitrusID (UC Riverside, NC State University and USDA).

Keywords:

Apps, camera, citrus, database, infrared, plant physiology.