The CropMonitor phone App which launched earlier this year came close to winning two major science awards. The App beat off almost all of the 700 applicants to make the final three entries of the Civil Service Science, Engineering & Technology Award, and was also runner up in the Oxford Farming Conference /RASE Practice with Science Award. 

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Commenting on the project, Prof Bill McKelvey director for the Oxford Farming Conference said: "You have trail-blazed the use of modern communication tools in providing detailed and very useful information to farmers in the field.” Sir John Beddington, Chief Scientific Advisory to HM Government, commented that “the innovative CropMonitor smart phone app stood out from a strong field of government science and engineering activity from across the UK.

The ‘App’ uses data from the CropMonitor information service combined with daily weather data to alert users to disease risks of the four major foliar diseases of wheat – Septoria, powdery mildew, brown rust and yellow rust. The app was developed by Farming Online and The Food and Environment Research Agency.

Peter Griffith, director of Farming on Line who helped launch the App with Bayer CropScience, was equally delighted. “It’s pleasing that the usefulness of the App has been recognised in this way. Increasingly farmers and agronomists are turning to this kind of technology.

"Having access to disease assessment data whilst in the field is a significant step forward, and I can only see the use of smart phone technology increasing in the agri sector,” he concludes.

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