1. Using Digital Agriculture to Transform Agriculture & Rural Development for Smallholder Farmers
Good afternoon everyone. Iam…. Today I want to talk to you about how Digital agriculture can dramatically improve farmers' lives by enhancing their access to information that can be used for risk assessment and decision-making. DA-powered research, outreach, and capacity building can improve agricultural productivity as well as access to safe and nutritious food, markets, and agro-weather information globally.
Maricelis Acevedo
Associate Director for Science
Delivering Genetic Gain in Wheat Project
IP-CALS

2. Dec 23, 2013: LOCALIZED STEM RUST EPIDEMIC IN SOUTHERN ETHIOPIA
Dec 23, 2013: LOCALIZED STEM RUST EPIDEMIC IN SOUTHERN ETHIOPIA. EXTREME CAUTION AND VIGILANCE NEEDED IN EAST AFRICA AND MIDDLE EAST REGION
Farmer fields Gasera,Ethiopia 26th Nov Left Digelu killed by stem rust; Right Digelu sprayed with Tilt (Photo: Bekele Abeyo, CIMMYT)
The previously resistant and popular cultivar “Digelu” is showing extreme susceptibility, with unsprayed crops exhibiting 100% incidence and 100% severity. Fields with, or close too, 100% loss have been observed It is estimated that approximately 10,000 ha of wheat in and around Agarfa and Gasera were effected. Some effective control was achieved by farmers who sprayed with registered and well tested fungicides. Research and government agencies in Ethiopia very actively responded to the situation.

3. No fungicide applied
Fungicide applied

4. SURVEILLANCE AND MONITORING
DRRW/DGGW partners operate the world's largest largest international crop disease monitoring system.
The surveillance system provides early warning of potential rust epidemics to scientists and farmers.
Thanks to the rust surveillance system and the commitment of our scientists, a global surveillance pathogen system was developed. InEthiopia, an early warning system has ben developed to provide farmers, governments and policy makers with the right and timely information for decision making
As of 2017, over 32,000 geo-referenced survey records and rust isolates records have been collected in 39 countries.
CIMMYT senior scientist Dave Hodson teaches field survey protocols to SAARC trainees.

5. Enabling Tools & Technologies: survey + sampling
Traditional
New Options
Smartphone / tablets (GPS, Camera, Electronic Form)
Rust Survey App developed
Automatic data transfer
GPS + Paper forms
Manual data entry
Survey teams using standardized methods in 30+ countries
Field to database now possible in near real-time

6. Data Management: Wheat Rust Toolbox NB: Generic – Applicable to all rusts
On-line Data Entry & control
Quality control/publish
Tablet / Smartphone survey tool
Outputs:
Survey Mapping
Pathotypes, +...
User Management
Data Export / Exchange
Data management system developed by Aarhus University, Denmark in collaboration with BGRI / FAO
Sits on top of a centralized Crop Problem Dbase – currently holds survey and pathotype data but will be expanded to include trap nursery and molecular diagnostic data.
Flexible dbase capable of holding all 3 rust diseases – expansion in progress to incorporate yellow rust data.
Toolbox permits: user management (different access / permission levels); on-line data entry; data quality control and publishing
Outputs: Series of data-base driven graphical tools. Currently: survey mapping, pathotype frequencies and distributions over time. Additional tools planned for the future. All outputs as iframes so seemelessly embedded in external websites eg Rust SPORE at FAO.
Standard data export / exchange permitting direct connection to external applications eg RustMapper at CIMMYT.
Host Pathogen Dbase
(Survey data, Pathotypes & Genotypes, Trap nursery, Rust on barberry)
External Applications
e.g., RustMapper

7. REAL-TIME MOBILE LABS FOR DIAGNOSIS OF PLANT PATHOGENS
“These new pathogen diagnostic technologies now being tested in Ethiopia offer the potential to revolutionize the speed at which at new wheat rust strains can be identified. This is critical information that can be incorporated into early warning systems and result in more effective control of disease outbreaks in farmer’ fields ”
-Dr. Dave Hodson, rust pathologist at CIMMYT in Ethiopia.
Development and deployment of an affordable, mobile in-field patho-genomics platform to revolutionize crop
pathogen surveillance and diagnostics in real time. First use of the MinION mobile genome sequencer
platform for crop pathogen diagnostics using wheat yellow rust as a test case and deployment
assessed in situ in Ethiopia.
MARPLE Diagnostics is a suitcase sized lab set up that contains the whole of the diagnostic pipeline and can run effectively even in the absence of stable electricity. The MinION itself is but one piece of the pipeline. Recreating the entire pipeline process as a mobile platform requires optimising each step of the process, from sample preparation to strain identification, for field lab use.
MARPLE (Mobile And Real-time PLant disEase) Diagnostics: A Pioneering Step Wheat Rust Management