Can a Supercomputer Help Save Florida Avocados?
November 19, 2020 For years, growers of Florida avocados have been contending with a debilitating plant malady known as laurel wilt disease and its vector the redbay ambrosia beetle. The struggle even sparked a “Save the Guac” campaign. Modern technology though might turn the tide for this specialty crop in the Sunshine State. UF/IFAS researchers are working on an app to help growers and industry stakeholders decide the best regional treatment options for the disease.
Anyone can spread the beetles when they move infested wood products, according to UF/IFAS researchers. Akin to dealing with any pandemic, efforts here are focused on getting the spread under control.
To help develop the app, scientists are using the HiPerGator, a supercomputer on the main University of Florida campus in Gainesville, to analyze massive amounts of data.
“This network analysis app will aid policy makers by providing input about how such things as subsidies or penalties for disease management are likely to affect growers’ management decisions and resulting disease spread,” says Berea Etherton, a doctoral student in plant pathology in the UF/IFAS College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. “Better regional management as a whole benefits individual growers.”
Scientists from UF/IFAS and USDA are working in concert and hope to gain better regional control of laurel wilt through machine learning for analysis of satellite-images. Those analyses train an artificial intelligence system to recognize patterns from remotely sensed images.
“In the next steps for the project, we plan to integrate satellite image analysis and disease recognition to support decision makers considering the best management strategies,” UF/IFAS Professor Karen Garrett says. “The computational demands of the machine-learning tools in this project will benefit from the new HiPerGator resources.”
Florida avocados are grown almost entirely in Miami-Dade County. According to UF/IFAS economists, about 80% of Florida’s avocados are sold outside Florida, and the industry has an impact of about $100 million to the state.