Thorndon Park Produce, Virginia

Sentinel 4 launched in its first trial deployment in the intensive vegetable cropping region of Virginia at Thorndon Park Produce […]

Sentinel 4 launched in its first trial deployment in the intensive vegetable cropping region of Virginia at Thorndon Park Produce on the 26th of October.

The unit feature one two-metre insect suction trap and one spore suction trap, as well as an onboard weather station. This site also collects data for targets captured by lure-based traps. Priority pests and pathogens for horticulture are targeted for identification at this site.

Insect pests targeted

Green peach aphid (Myzus persicae)

Green mirid (Creontiades dilutus)

Western flower thrips (Frankliniella occidentalis)

Melon cotton aphid (Aphis gossypii)

Green vegetable bug (Nezara viridula)

Onion thrips (Thrips tabaci)

Fungal pathogens targeted

Botrytis grey mould (Botryitis cinerea)

Sclerotinia white rot (Sclerotinia minor &/ S. sclerotiorum)

iMapPESTS data dashboard by Data Effects

Weather and data for pest and pathogens trapped by the suction traps are shared via the data dashboard (link below).

Lure-trap target counts are updated as data becomes available and shared on this page.

Weather data is captured and presented in real-time (temperature, relative humidity & rainfall) on our data dashboard (link below).

Insect data are presented as the total number of each target insect counted in collected samples from our 2m trap as data becomes available.

Spore data is presented as kilo copies of target DNA per sample from the spore sampler as data becomes available.

Click here to view data dashboard

*Dashboard best viewed on a desktop. Best viewed in landscape on a mobile phone/tablet

Nov 2020
iMapPESTS trial new, compact sentinel at Thorndon Park Produce

iMapPESTS trial new, compact sentinel at Thorndon Park Produce

A high-tech mobile surveillance unit was delivered at the end of October as part of Hort Innovation’s multi-agricultural industry surveillance initiative – iMapPESTS.  
iMapPESTS is delivering six sentinels by the end of 2020. The fourth sentinel in the suite of six was delivered at the end of October.

The newest unit, Sentinel 4, is smarter, smaller, lighter and more flexible compared with earlier sentinels, which is particularly important in the current COVID-19 environment where movement of people and goods are restricted in some parts of the country.  

Meet vegetable grower Anthony de Ieso from South Australia who has been involved in the iMapPEST project and believes sentinels can improve the way growers approach their pest management.