Turkey: AI improves pest detection in Kayseri's soilless farming

In Kayseri, an artificial intelligence developed by professors Handan Altınok and Alper Altınok, faculty members at the Faculty of Agriculture at Erciyes University, detects agricultural diseases and pests, thus preventing unnecessary pesticide use.

The academic couple researching soilless agriculture has developed an AI system named “Bugmapper.” Operating via a web interface, the system is specifically designed to monitor diseases and pests in greenhouse areas, such as tomato moths, thrips and whiteflies, combatting them with AI and tracking their progress.

As pests attack plants, they adhere to smart traps installed inside greenhouses, supported by the mobile application uploaded by producers to their phones.

Through detailed examinations facilitated by artificial intelligence on data transferred from the device to cloud environments, pests in traps are counted and mapped out by categorizing them into groups. Subsequently, targeted pesticide applications can be implemented regionally without spreading to other crops, thus curbing excessive agricultural pesticide use.