Plant and Pest Diagnostic enetwork

Transcription

1 [Norm Dart and others] Plant and Pest Diagnostic enetwork So today we're going to be talking about the Plant and Pest Diagnostic enetwork. My name is Norm Dart and I work as an Extension Coordinator for Washington State University out of Puyallup, and we're here today in Spokane County where we are going to work with some Master Gardeners. A plant sample, a weed sample came in that a client brought in that they are going to identify. They don't know what it is so they are going to identify it using the Plant and Pest Diagnostic enetwork online interface to solicit help from experts across the state. Hi, can you help me? Sure. I found this weed in my yard and I don't know what it is. Could you identify it for me please? Did you by any chance notice it last year to see if it flowered? You know, I don't even think I've recognized this in my yard before and that's what caught my eye because it just looked so different. What I can do is I can take some pictures of this send it off to this place that will be able to identify it for me and they will be able to send me back the information and I will be able to contact you. So how long does that take to get an identification? Sometimes they can get back on the same day. Oh, okay. That sounds great. If you're using the Plant and Pest Diagnostic enetwork to help you diagnose a sample and the Plant and Pest Diagnostic enetwork can be used in sending samples to aid the diagnosis of either weeds, insects, or other plant diseases. The first step is to take some photos of it. You have a sample, you don't know what it is, and you need to take some digital photos of it to send it off to another diagnostician throughout the state. So we have a weed sample here that's an unknown that just came in and what are some important aspects of the weed that we might want to capture here Laura? I've noticed that it's got rolled leaves, some are in sets of six, some are in sets of four. It also has a square stem that could put it into the mint family. So I think importantly we need to get a photo that captures the shape of the stem, the number of leaves per whorl, we need to kind of get a more macroscopic picture on a white or neutral backdrop in which we have some sort of scale beside it. Page 1 of 7

2 Yeah, exactly because you need to measure the leaves. That can capture things that you're telling us are important for the diagnosis of the sample. And also the roots system, I see it's got a little tiny tap root, probably is an annual. So this sample is going to be sent out through the Plant and Pest Diagnostic enetwork which we will learn to use later. We'll actually be seeing how to log in and use the system, so we need to make sure we're capturing the right things in the photo so the evaluator on the other end, be it a county extension agent or a WSDA employee, will be able to do their best in giving you a diagnosis. If you don't capture the right elements they might tell you Send us some more photos. So it's not going to be the end of the world if you didn't capture all of the needed requirements, but it's best to try and get all the needed pictures on the onset of things so you don't have to be resubmitting photos. This is a camera, Laura, that is similar to the ones we have bought and we have out at the different counties for them to use to help aid in the Plant and Pest Diagnostic enetwork. There's different setting here, I usually put it on the landscape setting, there's pictures of mountains in a little box, it's the landscape setting. That's a fine one to use, you can also use portrait, that takes fine photos too. So landscape takes portraits close up? That's fine to take it close up as long as you put it on the macro setting. So you press this little picture of a flower and that's called the macro setting, and it will tell you when the macro setting is on, it will beep. Okay. And then you want to capture, you can capture the image just by holding it in your hand and we also have this little button here. Right here, there's a picture of a hand shaking, you press that and that's already activated, just to make sure that if your hands are shaking a little bit you won't get a really blurry image. And I don't know if you can see the numbers on the ruler or not. Ah, that looks pretty good. That actually worked well. One important aspect of taking a photo, the lighting in here is fine, you can t see the window but we're getting some side lighting. But it's important to get lots of light coming in from the side, so we could get next to a window using overhead light and the window coming in from the outside works well. But if you don't have that you can set up some light bulbs and have them coming in from the side so you're getting that side lighting. It works really well to get the definition and the 3D effect of the sample you are working with. I m going to make sure that I get a picture of that root. It also might be important to show that it's sprawled out and that it's not just a single stem coming upwards, it's sprawled out from the beginning. That kind of a whorled stem makeup. Page 2 of 7

3 Yeah, that's good to show, kind of how it would be laying out in the field. To look at the photos you've just taken you just press this button here and that activates the little monitor here and shows you the pictures you've just taken. That looks pretty good, it's in focus, you've captured a lot of the elements with the sample you'll need. So at the different county offices around the state a lot of counties have this same microscopy setup. Now this happens to be the compound scope. We're taking some photos here of some important characters on a weed. Can you tell us, Laura what some important things are here you want to capture? With the microscope you'd be able to identify even the hairs on a leaf and what they'd look like because that's an identifying feature, the hairs on top of the leaf, under the leaf, and be able to get a close-up of the structure of the stem, what exactly it looks like. This one I'm pretty sure is square, but maybe under the microscope maybe I won't even find that. Also the top of the leaf has identifying features, the texture of the leaf, I'll be able to see that and that's an identifiable feature. Now we can't cover every aspect of how to, we plant a lot of seeds here, the different aspects of the camera and some major key points that you need to focus on when using this specific compound microscope setup. But a few things here that I find important, this knob here, and we have the same microscope setup and our microscope gives us a pretty good deal at the different counties, this here is the adjustment for the different levels of magnification so when we're tuning this we're looking at the magnification, and this larger knob here is actually allowing you to put in focus, to focus at the different magnification levels. So you can see here we have in our viewfinder the digital image of what we're seeing under the microscope, and you can look right here at the LCD monitor and adjust it so you're in focus, and then when you're ready you simply use it just like a digital camera, and right here is the button to take the photo just push the button. It's kind of darkened up. It has darkened up and one thing that I like to do is you take, we have some lighting here to get it right on the top of the leaf and that helps a lot, especially with this setup. We'll give it a little bit more light and focus it on the side. Oh, the side. And putting it in on the side and on the top actually allows you to get a better image here. See how that lights it up? Now try taking a photo of that. I think that's turned out a lot better, you can even see the pubescence, the little hairs on the leaves. So that worked out pretty well. Yeah, and maybe take a picture underneath the leaf as well. Yeah, take a picture on the underside. Limit the number. You can probably by taking five photos that should be enough. We try to limit to about five photos looking at both macroscopic and microscopic features of the sample. When you are using this type of Page 3 of 7

4 lighting setup you can put the lighting in on the side and direct it downward and to the side and that really gets a good picture. Be a little cautious of putting it at full lighting. A hundred will really burn out the bulbs fast, you should really keep it around fifty percent is really the highest you want to go for any prolonged period. Okay so now we're here at the main page of the WSU Plant and Pest Diagnostic enetwork if you could just log in Laura. And now she's in the system and what we can do now is we can submit a sample and you can see there's different types of samples, you can submit an insect sample for identification, a commercial plant disease identification, ornamental sample, a weed sample, or a lawn and turfgrass issue. So if we're using this for a diagnostic tool, the first step is we have to select what type of sample. And right now we're working with a weed, right, Laura? So you chose the plant and weed identification form. It asks what county you're from, we're in Spokane County, and now we just need to enter the client information, and that is the information you took at the desk earlier. So now we've entered all of our client information so now we're just going to continue on with the sample. We've entered the client information, so just click on continue and it will take you now to the sample information, the type of information you will collect right at the counter for example. And I want to go back a step here, it's really important to decide right from the beginning what type of sample you're submitting. In this case we're submitting a digital only sample. If you were going to submit a digital sample and follow it up with a physical one to whatever diagnostician that you are sending the sample to, you would need to click digital and physical, and sometimes you may only submit just a physical sample, especially if it's a plant disease and they need to see it so they can try to culture it, they actually need the physical sample at the labs so they can culture from it. But in this case we are using a digital only sample and now we'll put in the date it was collected, but it's really important to put in the date it was collected, not even the date it was brought in to the clinic because this is important for database. Seeing if we are going to recall when samples have actually been found in the field we are going to need to know what date they were collected. So we put in the collection date. And it was collected today. It was collected today, now we need to choose the type of commodity. How would you classify this weed sample? A broadleaf. Broadleaf weed, okay. And what is our concern? Anything that... Is this a dropdown menu? This is a dropdown menu. Okay, then I say it s eastern Washington. For commodity it's a dropdown menu and we're going to choose weed or plant for identification, eastern Washington. Choosing the right commodity is very important Page 4 of 7

5 because that determines where the sample is going to be sent to, so if we checked western Washington it would be sent to a weed specialist on the western side of the Cascades, but since we're here in Spokane in eastern Washington we chose weed or plant identification eastern Washington. So anything in red you have to fill out in order for the sample to be submitted. These are very important fields to spend some time on filling in accurately. So what is our specific concern about this plant sample? She wants to know what it is, it was found in her flower bed. Okay, so it was actually a weed in her flower bed so we can just fill that in. Okay. Client found a weed in a flower bed. I would like to just scroll down here to look at all the different, I think it's important for people just to get a feel of the different fields they can fill in here. We have location, you could just put what city or county if you don't know the exact location, but be as specific as you can because that will help in mapping the information later when it's available in the database. For every different sample form there are different areas of importance. For example, for a weed form we have it specified so it asks questions about the color of the flowers (which we don't have) so we have to leave that blank. But the different forms will walk you through the important characteristics of whatever type of sample you're submitting. If it's an insect then it will ask you different questions than a weed, so keep in mind that this sample form is specific for plants. This is a very important step it asks, Has the sample been evaluated? This sample has not been evaluated because we're using the system as a diagnostic tool and we're going to send it to a diagnostician. If we had already evaluated it and we knew what the problem was, we could just press yes the sample has been evaluated and it would put it into a database that would store it and we could retrieve it later, just to keep record of the seasonality of diseases that go into the clinic. Yeah, anything that you would like to add, important descriptors about the plant? What do you think are some important things? It's got square stems, whorled leaves. So, now when we're ready to send the sample off leave it at choose automatically. For the Master Gardener clinics we have the system set up, so based on the commodity you choose and based on the sample type it will automatically send it to the right evaluator. I think we're ready now, we said the sample has not been evaluated, we're using the system as a diagnostic tool. Now we have to browse and just upload the photos. And share this information with others, I'd be glad to have other people know about it. That's another very good point. This question here, share the sample information with others, if it's potentially a commercial sample of economic importance or a client doesn't want their information shared on this network, press no do not share, but for most Master Gardener samples it is fine to share it with the Plant and Pest Diagnostic enetwork community. So now we've got that photo uploaded. Now because we have chosen digital photos before we have to attach at least one photo to be able to submit Page 5 of 7

6 our sample, if we had chosen just physical we could have submitted it directly into the system without a photo. Now we're ready to submit the form. We've completed it and we press submit form and our sample was successfully submitted, it was sample number Just click on recently submitted samples and let s look at our sample here. And it shows us our sample form here with all of our information that we just entered. Now this is what the diagnostician is going to see on the other line. So this got sent to a diagnostician who specializes on weeds in eastern Washington. So there are different things we can do with the Plant and Pest Diagnostic enetwork. We've gone through submitting a sample, but we can also search the database in different ways to find samples. If we find a sample we might want to try and look up a similar one to try and have help diagnosing it, or if we just want to peruse into our clinic to get an idea of how many samples we see a month by month and just to keep records of the services we provide to clients. Now there are several ways we can search for samples in the system. We can do a free text search, so let's just look at that really briefly. We could type in anything, for example type in apples to see what comes up. So we just typed in apples and it shows us all the types of samples relative to apples, it shows insect samples related to apples, commercial, disease related to apples, and so on. Let's click on insect identification and let's look here at sample. So here is an example of a sample that was found associated with an apple and we just found that by using the free text search sample. And we can go back now and look It says BYO. It says BYO. So this is kind of a neat function, it allows us to summarize data in different ways and create reports. So if we go, for example and you can play with this on your own to see all the different capabilities it has, so let's look at all forms and click on all counties. So keep it on all forms because that's looking at all of the insect, weed, and plant disease information for all counties, for all months in 2007, you can also sort it out by year. And then there is this breakout scope so we can sort it by diagnostician, pest, or county. Just out of curiosity let's see what the different counties have submitted to the system in 2007, and you can look at it as summary data or as Excel files, or as links to specific samples. Let's just see a summarization of the data to see what it looks like. So here it's showing the samples, the number of samples, all the counties submitted throughout 2007 in relation to insects, and you can see for example that Pierce County had 166 samples come through their Master Gardener plant clinic. Go to recently submitted. I like to go to recently submitted just to see what folks have been submitting recently just to get an idea of what's occurring out in the field. So here's a sample, that's an Okanogan sample, an insect there. Click on it to enlarge it and let's take a look at the quality of the image. See that's a very well-taken photo, it's a side view and it shows the number of legs, it's showing both the top and the bottom at the same time, that's a good way to take a single photo of an insect to get a lot of information, the evaluator will get a lot of information from this. It would help us if they had a ruler. A ruler, or at least, it's hard to have a ruler on a microscope picture on a compound microscope, but if you could at least in the photo say what magnification you're using, Page 6 of 7

7 so if you're using 4x or 7x and so on and so forth. When you're using your digital cameras for digitally assisted diagnostics I like to use the USB cable, put it straight into the computer and that way you aren't storing a bunch of photos on your computer which can take up a lot of space, so I put it right in, you can browse right from your camera which we'll look at later when we're uploading a photo, and that's the way we usually do it. So Laura submitted her sample a few days ago and now we have Milo here is checking his Master Gardener account and he sees that the weed sample that Laura submitted just a few days ago has been diagnosed by a diagnostician in another county, a weed science specialist. So Milo, what did the diagnostician find here, you can see that we have the recommendation as well as the diagnosis right here on the form. Now Milo has the diagnosis and the recommendation from the diagnostician from another county through the Plant and Pest Diagnostic enetwork, so now Milo all you have to do is get back to your client who brought in the original weed sample and make sure they're relayed this information. Page 7 of 7