Diagnostic Image Series Development for Supporting IPM in the Southern Region

Correct diagnosis of the causal agent of a plant disease is the first step to appropriate management; however, the expertise to identify plant pathogens is limited. Development of educational resources to leverage this expertise and train new diagnosticians is needed. One type of resource that has been explored is collections of images to illustrate the diseases. For the images that do exist to illustrate these pathogens few are: • representative of all life stages, spore types, and symptoms • arranged as a step-by-step progression to demonstrate how the pathogen can be isolated and identified with annotations to describe diagnostic features • Specifically targeted to the common diseases affecting agricultural commodities in the Southern United States. The Southern Region IPM Center generously funded in 2009 a seed grant ($25,000 total over 2 years) to begin to collect and upload diagnostic images from the Southern Plant Diagnostic Network hub lab at the University of Florida. This R-IPM proposal is one of three sister proposals based on expanding the scope of this idea.Two other regions have recognized the need for this type of image resource, as well as the benefit the currently-funded project is already having on diagnosis in the SE US. With funding from the seed grant, UF clinic personnel have captured thousands of images and submitted nearly 100 reviewed ones to IPM Images-Bugwood (http://www.ipmimages.org/collections/viewcollection.cfm?id=70215). However, resources are not available at the other SPDN laboratories to collect and submit their images, although all states indicated they would like to and all are interested in sharing their image resources through a publicly-available online resource. The lack of personnel to devote to this project, in addition to a lack of photographic equipment at some institutions, is hampering the further development of this resource. This proposal seeks to coordinate this effort while supplying a small amount of funding to the collaborating states in an effort to build sustainable momentum. Additionally, we propose to build on the images and develop diagnostic fact sheets (“Plant Pathogen/Disease Profiles”), pulling images from the database and adding relevant diagnostic and management information. We foresee these Profiles as a resource for those consulting and/or developing IPM documents such as PMSPs, in addition to their intended use as diagnostic guides for accurate laboratory and field identification.