Precision Insect Monitoring with iSCOUT

Importance of Optimizing Insect Management

Pests are responsible for significant yield losses in agriculture worldwide every year. From moths and fruit flies to invasive species like Popollia japonica, their impact on crop quality, harvest volume, and economic return can be substantial. Especially when infestations go undetected or protective measures are delayed.

Effective insect monitoring plays a crucial role in protecting the crops prone to pest infestation. Having an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) set in place, can mean a difference between successful and profitable yield or an enormous economical loss.

WHAT IS INTEGRATED PEST MANAGEMENT (IPM)?

Integrated Pest Management is a holistic approach to crop protection that prioritizes sustainable, science-based strategies to manage pests. Instead of relying solely on chemical treatments, IPM integrates multiple control methods. It is designed to minimize risks to human health, beneficial organisms, and the environment, while maintaining effective pest control in agricultural systems.

CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS

Effective insect monitoring is one of the most important parts of Integrated Pest Management. It provides the insight needed to properly time pesticide applications and reduce their (unnecessary) use, and ultimately secure crop performance.

That’s where iSCOUT by Pessl Instruments comes in. These AI-powered, remote monitoring tools give growers a complete and continuous overview of insect activity across their fields, helping them make faster, more informed decisions. Below are 4 main challenges growers face and how METOS helps solve them.

CHALLENGE 1: Pest identification

Knowing which insect species are present in the field, and which are actually harmful, is the foundation of IPM. Misidentification can lead to unnecessary treatments, harming beneficial species and/or wasting resources.

SOLUTION: iSCOUT traps are equipped with high-resolution cameras and powered by AI that identifies insects based on visual markers. The data is reviewed by an in-house entomologist and the tools are improved continuously, ensuring that the devices accurately recognize pests down to the species level*.

*Species level recognition is not available on all insects. iSCOUT will recognize insects down to the most available Taxa.

CHALLENGE 2: Time-Consuming Manual Monitoring

Traditional traps require frequent field visits and manual inspection. This is labor and time-intensive, prone to error, and often fails to provide timely data for fast-growing pest populations.

SOLUTION: All iSCOUT traps operate remotely and send daily images and insect counts directly to the FieldClimate platform. You can view pest pressure across your fields anytime, from anywhere, reducing time spent on manual checks.

Additionally, with iSCOUT Mobile, growers can also digitize sticky traps already in use by simply photographing them via the app, turning manual counting into a digital one.

CHALLENGE 3: Acting too early or too late

Without reliable data on pest population trends, treatments are often applied too soon which results in wasted inputs, or too late, leading to crop damage.

SOLUTION: iSCOUT gives you daily updates on insect activity and helps you follow how pest populations change over time. This means you can clearly see the best time to act. When used together with other METOS devices, like weather stations and weather forecast subscription, you can plan treatments only when the conditions are right for pests to develop or spread.

CHALLENGE 4: Lack Of Insights

Many Integrated Pest Management systems are based on reacting to pest problems and not on how to prevent them. Prevention requires data on not just insects, but also the environment.

SOLUTION: Integrating iSCOUT devices with METOS weather stations and subscriptions, growers can combine pest monitoring with environmental data. This offers a complete decision-making support system, giving full control to the grower. This supports long-term prevention, not only immediate reaction which is often too late.

COMPLETE VIEW OF INSECT POPULATION IN YOUR FIELDS

Having the right tool is key to successful monitoring. You can choose among many variations of our remote monitoring insect traps for a daily view of the insect populations on remote locations of your field:

  • iSCOUT Pheromone: Use it together with various pheromone lures to keep track of moths and butterflies in your field.
  • iSCOUT Fruit Fly: Designed to catch fruit flies or insects attracted by liquid lures.
  • iSCOUT Bug: Built to catch marmorated stink bugs and other bugs.
  • iSCOUT Color Trap: Intended for monitoring sticky traps of different colors. The types of insects caught depend on the color of the plate used:
    • Blue: Flies, leafminers, and others
    • Yellow: Leafminers, olive fruit fly, western corn rootworm, common pollen beetle, and others
    • White: Apple sawfly, plum sawfly, plum fruit sawfly, raspberry beetle, and others
  • iSCOUT Popillia Add-on: Developed for the monitoring of the invasive Japanese beetle Popillia japonica. You can also use it for similar beetles.

With our electronic traps, you no longer need to check your traps every day to stay alert.

GO FULLY DIGITAL

Digitizing pest monitoring brings significant advantages in efficiency, accuracy, and data accessibility. This is especially important for larger or hard-to-reach areas. By combining manual traps with remote mobile monitoring, you can create a scalable and comprehensive insect surveillance system.

We offer iSCOUT Mobile, an app with which you can digitize your regular sticky traps. Use this computer vision AI on your phone to identify and count insects in your chromotropic/delta manual traps. Keep and track your insect data organized in Fieldclimate cloud and check the insect pressure on-the-go.

Our products can be used in combination for a more complete view of the insect pressure in your farm. Place a remote electronic iSCOUT trap in an area of interest, such as areas with known high insect population, and have a complete view of the farm by using iSCOUT Mobile on the rest of the plantation for a proper tracking of the pests.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Pest monitoring isn’t about responding to outbreaks. It is more about anticipating them. Whether you are managing a small-scale orchard or thousands of hectares, precision insect monitoring with METOS solutions gives you the insights you need to act on time.

Want to see iSCOUT Mobile in action?

Get an activation code for a demo iSCOUT Mobile* and explore how easy it is to identify and track insect populations right from your phone.

*The demo account includes 20 image detections valid for one month. Unused detections do not carry over, and no additional images are granted if the limit is reached early.

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