Farmer-friendly portable system for diagnosis of pest attack in cashew trees

Abstract

Owing to the continual attacks by pests particularly the bark-beetles (viz borers), there has been tremendous destruction of the forest resources. Beetle attacks are also responsible for severe production loss in commercial crops, thus leading to distress to farmers. In this paper, we have presented a novel approach to detect the pest attack in yielding cashew trees at early stage, i.e. to develop a portable unit. The preliminary analysis of bark samples (taken at height of 1.5 meter) shows a clear distinction between the good and infested trees. Also, the chlorophyll analysis performed on leaf samples shows the result for good and different stages of infestation as decrease in absorbance values of the leaf extract. The proposed design will indicate the status of a cashew tree by analysing the chlorophyll content of leaves and conductivity of bark, both of which will be utilised to make an ultimate confirmation.