Gizmos & Gadgets: New Sick Plant App to Help Gardeners and Gardener Wannabes

November 14, 2016 – Before my wife and I downsized from a home in the suburbs of Toronto to a mid-town apartment I was an avid gardener. My rock garden in the front of the house and my patio garden in the back were true labours of love. I was constantly experimenting with different plant and flower species to create optimal growth conditions. I planted tomatoes and peppers in addition to flowers and shrubs. And when a plant started looking sickly I scoured my gardening books and the Internet for answers to what ailed them.

So when I read about Plant Village this week, an app for mobile phones that lets you take a picture of your sick plant to diagnose what ails it I was simply gobsmacked. What an incredible tool for those of us who get great pleasure from tending plants and rejoicing when they flower and provide nectar for insects and birds, colour and beauty, and a nice ripe and healthy tomato for a summer salad. And what a useful tool for farmers who when encountering diseased plants in the field can immediately identify what’s wrong with them by snapping a picture.

The app is still in development with the launch date early next year. It originates from a website bearing a similar name. Developed to be a free library of science-based knowledge on plant diseases, the website and now the app is a product of Penn State University in collaboration with the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. The app and website are both free.

The goal for the app on launch in 2017 is to offer a database of 150,000 photographs of diseased plants. Plans to increase to 3 million photographs are underway. Initially the app will focus on the 10 most common diseases that impact 30 plants. When a user takes a picture of a sick plant (similar to the images seen in the picture mosaic below), the app’s neural network and software algorithms sift through the library of images to identify the likely disease. With high resolution images the app identifies plant diseases with 98.21% accuracy. Low light and poorer images produce less accurate results.

Plant Village is one of a growing number of mobile apps being developed to help farmers and gardeners this way. I came across another today called Plantix, a diagnostic tool developed by PEAT, a Hannover, Germany not-for-profit that offers its app for free as well.

Plantix recognzies more than 170 plant diseases and invasive pests. Like Plant Village the user snaps a picture. Plantix provides a comprehensive library to help match images to diseases, and invasive pests and offers treatment suggestions.