Plant Health Surveillance in focus at One Health Conference

The event, hosted by the Animal & Plant Health Agency (APHA), included four sessions covering Terrestrial and Aquatic Animal Health; Plant Health & Biodiversity; New Technologies and Public Health.

Some of the new technologies being developed included use of drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to scan for invasive species with infrared and hyperspectral cameras.

CHAP Innovation Hub Lead Richard Glass gave a presentation on CropMonitor Pro (CMP), a decision support tool for crop pest and disease control developed by Fera, for CHAP. He highlighted the future potential of CMP to provide an early warning system by detecting invasive pests and diseases and how monitoring populations, local meteorological data etc. could help to identify risks and spread of future outbreaks. The delegates were interested in CMP particularly related to optimising biopesticide applications in the future and whether timing of the application of pesticides could somehow be coordinated between local farmers.

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