Crop diseases, a major cause of famine, have always been diagnosed by visual inspection, though scientists today also use microscopes and DNA sequencing. But the first line of defense is still the keen eyes of farmers around the world, many of whom do not have access to advanced diagnostics and treatment advice.
To address this problem, scientists from Penn State and EPFL, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, are releasing 50,000 open-access images of infected and healthy crops. These images will allow machine-learning experts to develop algorithms that automatically diagnose a crop disease. The tool then will be put into the hands of farmers -- in the form of a smartphone app.
"By providing all these images with open access, we are challenging the global community in two ways," said David Hughes, assistant professor of entomology and biology, Penn State. "We are encouraging the crop-health community to share their images of diseased plants, and we are encouraging the machine-learning community to help develop accurate algorithms."