2014 National Sustainable Strawberry Initiative Project Leader Meeting

1. Strawberry
Diagnostics
NC STATE UNIVERSITY
Brian Whipker
Floriculture Extension and Research
National Strawberry
Sustainability Initiative

2. Strawberry Diagnostic:
A Problem Solving Tool
• Strawberry growers face with unknown plant
disorders during the production season.
• A comprehensive, holistic problem-solving
identification tool will aid in rapid identification of
arthropod, disease, physiological, and nutritional
disorders and will allow growers to select the
most appropriate management strategy.
• This project created a web-based interactive
diagnostic key that strawberry growers can access
via their computer, tablet, or smart phone.

3. Strawberry Diagnostic:
A Problem Solving Tool
• Strawberry growers face with unknown plant
disorders during the production season.
• A comprehensive, holistic problem-solving
identification tool will aid in rapid identification of
arthropod, disease, physiological, and nutritional
disorders and will allow growers to select the
most appropriate management strategy.
• This project created a web-based interactive
diagnostic key that strawberry growers can access
via their computer, tablet, or smart phone.

4. Team Members
• Entomology – Hannah Joy Burrack
• Plant Pathology – Frank Louws and Barbara
Shew
• Horticulture Production – Jeremy Pattison and
Rocco Schiavone
• Plant Nutrition – Brian Whipker
• Web Development – Rob Ladd and Rhonda
Conlan

5. PROCESS
Steps

6. Key Development
• Disorder identification
• Key attributes for differentiating disorders
• Build key framework
• Write fact sheets
• Populate the key with fact sheets
• Beta testing

7. Key Development
• Disorder identification
– Arthropod (Insects) (21)
– Diseases (26)
– Physiological (24)
– Nutritional (14)

8. Key Development
• Key attributes for differentiating disorders
– Primarily location based (age)
• Upper foliage
• Overall foliage
• Lower foliage
• Crown
• Roots
– Symptoms
• For example: chlorotic vs necrotic leaves

9. Strawberry Plant
Crown
NC STATE UNIVERSITY
Roots
Leaves
Flower
Fruit
Runner

10. Key Development
• Build key framework
– The Strawberry Diagnostic Key allows users to
identify the most likely cause of symptoms
present on their crop.

11. Attributes

12. Attributes

13. Key Development
• Disorders can be defined and edited in real
time.
• Disorders definitions are cloud based, so
multiple applications have access to the data.
– This means that a description for, say, Strawberry
Boron (B) Deficiency can be used for this tool, and
also for a news item on common strawberry
nutrition disorders, for example.
– That is, the information need not be recreated
each time a specialist needs data on that disorder.

14. Key Development
• The tool is a
responsive web
application,
meaning it works
well on Desktop,
tablet and
mobile phones.

15. Key Development
• The Strawberry Diagnostic Key is compliant with Section 508 of the
Rehabilitation Act (29 U.S.C. '794 d)
• It uses a modern MVC backend to handle HTTP requests and Object
Relational Mapping for all database queries (Django / Python / MySQL).
– This means that the application meets industry standards for security,
scalability and reliability.
• The architecture of the application is modular, so upgrades and
maintenance can be developed and tested using industry standards.
• The same technology is used on high-traffic, high-availability sites like The
New York Times, The Washington Post, NASA, Pinterest, etc.
• Usage metrics will be available through Google analytics, a service that
generates detailed statistics about a website's traffic and traffic sources.
This will allow us to tell how many people are using the tool, how they are
using it and how they found it.
• With these analytic data, we can tailor the tool to make it more effective
and easier to use.

16. Key Development
• Write fact sheets
• Populate the key
with fact sheets
• Beta testing

17. Key Development

18. SUMMARY

19. Summay
• Objective:
– Create a diagnostics key (by June 30, 2014)
• We have create the framework of an interactive
key for diagnosing strawberry disorders.
• Created fact sheets for each disorder.
• Use of the key will aid growers in problem
identification and allow them to take corrective
actions before crop losses occur.

20. KEY DEMO

21. Web Link
• Key will be housed in the NC State University
Strawberry Portal
http://strawberries.ces.ncsu.edu/