Nuts & Bolts: How the Smart Sprayer knocks down a major crop disease

Mantis Smart Sprayer helps beat a costly disease and its many allies

Why INSV is such a problem right now

After years of drought, the return to increased moisture has prompted some to declare war on INSV given a potential repeat of its damage to the region’s lettuce crop. The rain that’s fallen in the Salinas Valley has meant more weeds. And those weeds are the perfect habitat for the insects such as the western flower thrips that carry INSV. Rainfall intensity and volumes will determine if insects living in weeds will survive and propagate.

After it’s delivered to fields via these insects, INSV can amplify the impact of the crop stress caused by the environment and other diseases. For example, lettuce plants can survive a Pythium root rot infection alone, but when infected with INSV at the same time, crop losses are accelerated. Even if plants survive the concurrent infections, it can impact crop uniformity, among the most important attributes of a successful lettuce crop.

What makes INSV so hard to control

Chemical control is the most common and effective way to manage INSV. That’s true of both knocking down weeds that provide habitat for host insects as well as the insects that vector the disease transmission. But that’s not easy.

“Managing the thrips will only reduce the amount of INSV that can get transmitted,” Kirsten Pearsons, University of California Cooperative Extension integrated pest management farm advisor for Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito counties, said in a university report. “You can kill 99.9% of the thrips, but you get one thrips that has INSV that enters a field, and now you have an infected lettuce plant. All of the thrips are going to come and they can spread it from there; pesticide slows things down, but it’s not going to eliminate it.”

Why and how Mantis can help with INSV

Once a field is infected, the damage can doom a crop, especially if it’s a co-infection with one of up to four common diseases managed annually in California lettuce crops. Industry estimates show as much as 12% of lettuce acreage — around 11,500 acres — weren’t harvested in 2022 because of INSV infections. So what can Mantis do to reduce damage?

It starts with thorough, detailed crop scouting to effectively identify the disease and its likely carriers and hosts, then smart applications of pesticides for insect carriers, herbicides for host weeds and fungicides to control potential secondary fungal infections.

This is where Mantis helps. The Mantis Smart Sprayer enables reduced application costs by allowing automated, precise applications of insecticides, herbicides and fungicides.

“The Smart Sprayer helps growers apply product to specific plants and weeds only. Its vision technology unlocks very targeted spray capabilities applying crop protection only where they are needed, so that means less chemical applied,” said Green Valley Farm Supply, Inc., PCA Frank Heffren. “With the Smart Sprayer, we’re seeing the change from broadcast applications to automated spot-spraying. Now, we can concentrate product only where it is needed.”

Though the Smart Sprayer has advanced vision and automation technology driving it, that’s not the entire equation. Its innovative combination of data capture/analysis, visual recognition and spray automation is paired with application hardware like high-accuracy flowmeters, pressure sensors and protected, configurable spray nozzles and plumbing systems that help deliver applications more consistently and more directly to their targets.

“The Smart Sprayer delivers a unique combination of technology and proven application components that contribute to its ability to hit only its targets and nothing more,” Heffren added.