This farmers, is a fantastic episode to wrap your ears around for the hours in the tractor. Whether you're still going in the tractor planting this years crop or you've luckily finished and enjoying some early rain especially along the East coast of Australia. Dr. Paul Melloy is a research fellow out of University of Queensland and has had his hand on the pulse for plant disease and how farmers can identify and prevent yield loss in their own crop.

Paul goes through the different apps available that are discussed on the episode so take a look and download if they're for you:

Blackleg canola manager (BlackLegCM) BlacklegCM- Blackleg Management App | Agriculture and Food
Sclerotinia canola manager (SclerotiniaCM) SclerotiniaCM - Sclerotinia Management App | Agriculture and Food
Yellow spot wheat manager (YellowSpotWM) YellowSpotWM - Yellow leaf spot management | Agriculture and Food
Stipe rust wheat manager (StripeRustWM) StripeRustWM | Agriculture and Food
Powdery mildew mungbean manager (PowderyMildewMBM) PowderyMildew MBM - Powdery Mildew management app for mungbean | Agriculture and Foo

The team is also working on delivering new crop disease models, such as: spatial risk of black spot in field pea; net-blotch in barley, Ascochyta blight in chickpeas and the soon to be released upper canopy infection tool in canola (UCI BlacklegCM).

The Grains Research and Development corporation (GRDC) are funding this work and anticipate if these apps are more widely adopted grain crop yield losses of at least 10%, due to disease, could be saved.

The “Disease epidemiology, modelling and delivery of management decision support tools” project I am working on is led by Jean Galloway and includes collaborating institutions and experts from across the country. All our models are built on up to 30 years of research trial data from all major growing regions.

You can catch Paul on Twitter at @PaulMelloy as this is where we found him for the podcast. Twitter can be a great resource for you as a farmer or someone who services the industry to stay connected and abreast of what is happening in the paddock or in the lab modelling for plant disease as Paul Melloy has been doing.

Find all of the Farms Advice Podcast episodes and also Paul's Farm Yarns episode coming out on Friday.

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