Pacific Pests & Pathogens

When crop pests and diseases occur farmers want immediate solutions. Time is of the essence. If they have to go searching for information which takes days to find, it might already be too late. They need to know what the problem is, what's caused it, and what to do about it. And they want to know now. This App gives extension staff and lead farmers all the information they need to treat the crop instantly. If there is no way of saving a crop, the steps should help to prevent the problem occurring in the future. After choosing the crop of interest, a series of simple questions are asked narrowing down the choices until a match is possible by comparing thumbnail images. Each fact sheet is divided into sections on damage, biology and life cycle, and management. What's New We started a series of fact sheets on weeds in version 8, but only two were published. Now with version 9 there are another 30, chosen by Fiji, Samoa, Solomon Islands and Tonga, as those most important to agriculture. Additional fact sheets will follow as we consult with other countries, and there will also be fact sheets on weeds that are considered a threat from countries outside the region. We adopted a similar approach to the pests and pathogens. Version 7 of the App gives the option to either view Full Fact Sheets, or Mini Fact Sheets which contain a summary of the information in the full fact sheets. Version 8 of the App contains 441 fact sheets. Version 9 of the App contains 471 fact sheets. Acknowledgements We would like to thank ACIAR, the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research for providing support in the development of the App under a sub-regional (Fiji, Samoa, Solomon Islands and Tonga) IPM project (HORT/2010/090). We thank Identic Pty Ltd., (https://www.lucidcentral.org) creators of Lucid and Fact Sheet Fusion for its development.