"We are scaling up to commercial during and after this next trial, and the RapidAIM service offering will be available for subscription through our channel partners," Research technician Laura Jones said.
The Smart Traps project is funded through Hort Innovation, with support from the Australian Government Department of Agriculture and Water Resources as part of its Agricultural Competitiveness White Paper, and project partners. The project will focus on smart trap technology for the surveillance of fruit fly in Australia. Ms Jones says RapidAIM is an Internet of Things (IoT) system, which is an internet-linked hardware and software play, using Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) with data analytic capability.
One of the distinct advantages is that the unique design of the capacitance sensors inside the traps allow for the discrimination of insects based on their behaviour.
'As an everyday example, operating a smart phone is based on capacitance and the disruption of the electrical field when you touch the screen; of course our sensor is a much finer design suitable for insects," Ms Jones said. "Other smart trap technology uses camera-based traps which require high capacity data transfer through 3G or 4G connectivity. Our sensors do not, they are able to transmit over LPWAN which is much more cost effective, and much more scalable, for example we are able to connect 1000 RapidAIM traps to 1 internet linked gateway over 4 kilometres away."
The company says monitoring for fruit fly is either mandatory for trade, or essential for effective pest management and efficiencies in production systems, and currently it is done manually. Every seven days in summer and every 14 days in winter biosecurity officers in Pest Free areas like Tasmania and South Australia and crop advisors in other fruit and vegetable production regions check fruit fly traps.
"Often traps are empty during an inspection round, however if fruit nearby has contains fruit fly larvae, a 7-14 day delay until the next inspection could be too late for effective management to stop an infestation," Ms Jones said. "Manual monitoring of fruit fly traps causes delays, risks outbreaks, and the loss of markets. RapidAIM is the solution. We aim to provide a service enabled by proprietary technology. Subscribers of the service are growers and biosecurity agencies, they receive real-time alerts of the presence and location of fruit fly. This allows them to respond rapidly to control the flies, minimize production losses, not waste time checking empty traps, and receive early warning of future fruit fly hot spots."
In April last year, RapidAIM completed the first semi-commercial field trial, comprising a grid of 80 traps across the Shepparton district, in an active production system in collaboration with agronomists and growers. Some of the feedback received was that growers found the RapidAIM system to be a hugely beneficial addition by means of instant notification of fruit fly presence, and the visualisation of a pest hot spot, meaning management can be proactive around fruit fly control rather that reactive.
She says growers were very interested in keeping the prototype system beyond the trial, and to date some of the infrastructure remains in Shepparton, as RapidAIM will be returning to the community for the next phase. While, many of the growers expressed interest in trailing an automated RapidAIM system for pest insects beyond fruit fly, which is something researchers are taking on board.
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