Wheat Rust Early Warning and Advisory Systems in Ethiopia – Implementation of Remote Sensing Technologies to Combat Crop Disease

Abstract:

Wheat rusts are among the most devastating and damaging diseases occurring on staple food crops. In Ethiopia, these diseases pose a major threat to food security, with several devastating epidemics in recent history. To help prevent major disease outbreaks, early detection and timely control are essential. In response to the wheat rust problem in Ethiopia, a consortium of national and international partners has created one of the most advanced, operational crop disease early warning and advisory systems in the world. This early warning system includes several advanced technologies and operates in near real-time within the wheat season. Key elements include near real-time field and mobile phone surveillance data, mobile nanopore sequencing diagnostics, meteorologically driven spore dispersal, disease environmental suitability forecasting and a platform for timely communication to policymakers, extension agents and small-holder farmers. Currently, no operational methods exist that exploit the potential of satellite imagery in crop disease early warning systems. Alongside UAVs, the availability of very high spatial and temporal resolution imagery, typified by Pleiades and Planet Skysat, provides for the first time the opportunity to develop new detection methods that could revolutionize disease early warning and response systems.

This presentation describes the existing early warning system and focuses on the current state of method development for new disease detection tools based on UAV high throughput phenotyping and very high resolution Pleiades and Skysat satellite imagery, demonstrated at selected field experiments.