NDAWN Potato Blight

What is it about?

This app utilizes weather data from the North Dakota Agriculture Weather Network (NDAWN) and individual field locations to improve accuracy on late and early blight prediction. The development the potato blight application increases convenience and information available to assist with farmer’s decisions. It allows each potato field to have alerts when severity values are close to threshold as well as provide messages with custom information, including local late blight outbreaks to each user. This will increase the accuracy of predicting late blight and early blight, decrease pesticide use, and improve prevention and control of these diseases. Late blight is a communal disease and easily spreads to nearby fields. By combining model data with NDAWN’s real-time information into an application, potato growers will be provided with an improved, comprehensive overview of potato field conditions, therefore enhancing the timeliness and efficiency of decision making. These benefits should greatly reduce spray drift potential, spraying during inversions, spray frequency and increase grower knowledge on current field and weather conditions. The purpose of this app is to improve potato late and early blight management by allowing specific model information for individual potato fields and alerting growers of current conditions and provide them the best management tools.