PlantwisePlus Blog

The Plantwise Knowledge Bank brings together plant health information from across the world. It includes a diagnostic tool, factsheet library, pesticide lists and pest alerts. For those seeking to diagnose a pest problem, the Plantwise Knowledge Bank’s Pest Diagnostic Tool is particularly useful, providing information to help identify the symptoms observed on a crop.

Tuta Absoluta © CABI

Diagnosing a pest problem

To be able to provide effective solutions to a plant health problem, it’s first important to diagnose a pest problem accurately. The diagnostic tool allows you to diagnose a crop problem through the symptoms observed and the part of the plant affected.

From the Plantwise Knowledge Bank home page, navigate to the diagnose a pest problem tile and click ‘identify a pest’.

Plantwise Knowledge Bank
Navigate to ‘Identify a pest’

Identify the pest problem

Once clicking on ‘identify a pest’, you are able to search by country or region from the drop-down list. The crop name is then typed into the search box and a list of suggested crops will appear to choose from.

Plantwise Knowledge Bank
Search by country and crop

Narrow down cause

The first step in narrowing down the cause of a plant health problem is to determine which part of the plant is affected by the pest. In some cases, several parts of the plant can be damaged, but to help diagnose the problem, the main part of the affected plant needs to be determined. The options provided in the tool include leaves, stems, whole plant, seeds, fruit, growing point, inflorescence, roots and vegetative organs.

Plantwise Knowledge Bank
Main part of affected plant selection

If the type of problem is already known it will help to narrow down your search further, otherwise a user would select ‘unsure’. The types of problems in the tool include mites, insects, fungi, nematodes and weeds.

The steps in the diagnostic tool mirror the plant clinic prescription form found on the data collection app.

Plantwise Knowledge Bank
Type of problem selection

Pest and disease results

Results from the diagnostic search are given as a list of possible pests or diseases, each with an image, and a link to a technical factsheet further describing the problem. The technical factsheet provides information on crop symptoms, preventative methods and effective solutions to the problem.

For further information on the pest or disease problem; the search tool on the Plantwise knowledge bank has over 15,000 pieces of content available for free.

Further reading

Contact us via email to share links to factsheets or any queries: plantwise@cabi.org


Visit the The Plantwise Knowledge Bank

1 Comment

  1. Joanah on 14th February 2022 at 7:41 AM

    Thanks for the article.
    Very much for the opportunity to read this article.

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