AN INSECT-monitoring start-up has received a $1.25 million funding boost to help protect Australia from its biggest biosecurity barrier to trade – the fruit fly.
Founded by CSIRO researchers Nancy Schellhorn, Darren Moore, and Laura Jones, RapidAIM provides real-time fruit fly detection and monitoring to help Australian producers battle against the devastating pest – and it could revolutionise pest monitoring across the globe.
Main Sequence Ventures, which manages the CSIRO Innovation Fund, is making the $1.25m investment in the start-up, which successfully trialled the technology with fruit producers in Victoria last year.
“Growers rely on weather radar and take action accordingly, but until now they haven’t had any pest ‘radar’ to support them against pests like fruit fly,” RapidAIM co-founder and chief executive Dr Schellhorn said.
“Existing fruit fly monitoring relies solely on manual trap checking, which limits the scale and depth of available information and costs valuable resources.”
Existing techniques to monitor fruit fly involve manually checking traps containing pheromones or food to lure the pests in.
The RapidAIM system uses low-powered smart sensors to detect insects like fruit fly from their characteristic movements.
The sensors, able to be placed by the thousands, send data to the cloud using a radio-modulated technique.
This gives producers real-time data flow of the pest on their farms and regions through a linked mobile app.
Dr Schellhorn said the new technology could reduce crop loss and provide early warnings of future pest hotspots.
“Our new technology can reduce the time spent checking traps by more than 35 per cent, and provides an immediate picture of fruit fly presence in specific locations to enable a rapid response for control,” she said.