Artificial Intelligence Fights Fruit Flies
Growers who live in states where fruit flies batter their harvest may have a new, high-tech piece of computer software that could help swat the little buggers. In Ag circles, the fruit fly has a track record. Over the years and billions of dollars in losses, farmers end-up going bald fighting this critter that has infested over 200 different species of crops.
It’s not just the growers who are getting bugged by these monsters. Have you been seeing small flies or gnats in your kitchen? Guess what? You’ve Bugs On Houseplants Home Remedies got fruit flies inside your house. This is really common around this time of year because they love ripened or fermenting fruits and vegetables.
Potatoes, tomatoes, brown bananas, melons, grapes, squash and any non-refrigerated How Often Should Pest Control Be Done produce that you get from the garden or market are susceptible.
Scientists in Taiwan believe they have a way to use artificial intelligence to throw a red flag on the field. This software is designed to forecast a future outbreak.
On the island, growers use traps that are checked every 10-day, counting the contents. Researchers at the National Taiwan University in Taipei wanted to make that process more automated.
They installed infrared beams of light in the traps. Think of Catherine Zeta Jones in the movie “Entrapment.” Remember the scene where she dances her way through a security system that has visible red lasers criss-crossing the room?
In the fruit fly trap when the beam is broken it’s recorded, telling the software to add a click. All of the results are transmitted to a central point every half-hour.
The Taiwanese government has helped pay for part of this project. Because of their support, the scientists have armed around 250 traps on fruit farms around the country. The software has the capacity to “think” and predict when the bug population is about to go off the charts.
Not stopping there, the team from the University has also put weather sensors in the traps. Since a lot of the behavior of fruit flies are dictated by changes in the weather – especially from a breeding standpoint – these micro-detectors collect that data, too. You see, when it’s humid the fruit fly population explodes.
Here’s the really neat part. When there’s the possibility of a mass infestation, government officials get a text message on their Smartphones sent by the software. This way, when the warning is read, it’s acted upon by immediately spritzing the area in question with pesticide.
Eighty-eight percent of the time, the artificially intelligent software hits the nail on the head.
Another prediction, only this one not from the software but from the scientists who developed the system. They believe that if most farmers used this AI, damage from the fruit fly could be reduced by half on the island south of mainland China.…