Argentinean Agronomy School of UBA and DuPont develop 'TrigoDecisorto' to protect wheat

The Agronomy School of National University of Buenos Aires, in agreement with DuPont company, developed an application for smartphones called 'TrigoDecisor,' which aims to reduce damage, loss of yield and quality caused by foliar diseases in wheat plantations in the pampas region of Argentina.

'TrigoDecisor' is based on the probability of response in performance against the application of fungicide. It allows farmers and technical advisors to define the optimum timing of fungicide applications, whether it yields profits or not.

The productive potential of the application determines the threshold levels for each field. Thresholds are levels of disease expressed as incidence (number of diseased leaves on the total sample in percent).

According to expert phytopathologists in Argentina, the application of fungicides for wheat diseases is a common practice to control rusts and stains, but still there are uncertainties regarding the optimal timing of control.

They explained that in most cases, the effects of applying fungicides on plant are prioritized over the pathogens. This is because of the widespread acceptance among producers and consultants that the main objective of a fungicide was to "protect and cure" wheat without understanding that this task was performed by acting on the pathogens.

Thus, many fungicides are applied depending on the phenological stages or with the aim that the leaves involved in the generation of yields receive chemical products, even without considering the level of disease.

Many farmers decide to apply fungicides with the goal of protecting the flag leaf and the immediate lower one.

In this framework of analysis, it is highly likely that during application, the crop presents pustules or spots on lower leaves, exceeding the recommendation thresholds.

Therefore, it is very common that application at the later stages means that performance gains and assuming damages are not accounted as “hidden costs” in the economic equation.

These costs can be highly significant and therefore methods should be developed to estimate them and to enable farmers to avoid losses.

When the pathosystems have damaging thresholds, the decision to control is more practical and has economic and epidemiological fundamentals, which makes it highly compatible with the concepts of integrated management of diseases, which guarantees the sustainability of agricultural production.