Digital tool helps Minnesota farmers diagnose crop diseases

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Digital tool helps Minnesota farmers diagnose crop diseases

Minnesota farmers have access to a tool that helps diagnose crop diseases during the growing season.

University of Minnesota Extension educator Angie Peltier says Digital Crop Doc allows users to upload as many as ten pictures for extension specialists to evaluate.

“They give us their phone number or email address and name, and they also provide many of the context clues that we would need. And those are the sorts of things that we would gather if we made a field visit ourselves.”

Examples would be crop rotation history and how symptoms are distributed throughout the field.

“Is it uniform across the whole field (or) is it in random patches? Maybe it’s in lower-lying areas of the field or higher hills in the field. Or maybe even only along field edges.”

Peltier tells Brownfield the digital tool is free thanks to the support of groups like Minnesota Corn and can be found online by searching digital crop doc.

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