Gardening is something that I love to do when I am at home. It gives me immense pleasure to look at those beautiful plants growing in my garden. It also disheartens me to see a dying plant in my garden. Identifying the disease of a plant is not easy for a laywoman like me. We need something easy to follow rather than just a book with thousands of plant diseases. A mobile phone app that can detect any plant disease in minutes becomes very useful.
AI has become useful in many sectors like medicine and agriculture. AI has become so advanced that it can detect diseases just from a picture of the infected plant. This new era of AI has revolutionized plant disease identification apps.
AI works on data and with more data, AI becomes more powerful. As time passes, AI will become better and better in their work.
Here are a few apps which you can install from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store on your mobile phones to identify any plant diseases at home.
Best Plant Disease Identification Apps
1. Agrio
Agrio is an AI-based plant sickness identification app. The app uses images uploaded by users to match with data available in the app’s database and then provides accurate details of the plant disease treatment.
Agrio has revolutionized crop monitoring technology by providing alters on users’ phones using remote image sensing when any changes are seen in the crop field.
This app also helps farmers, and crop inspectors record crop data on the go.
Download for iPhone
2. CropsAI
An amazing app to monitor crop health. This app currently supports only a few crops and they are planning to include more crops in the future.
Using your mobile phone camera, click pictures of the infested crop and upload them to CropsAI. With the help of AI, the app will give you the best advice to treat plant diseases.
Currently free to use and you can contribute to the improvement of the app.
Not available to download(as of Feb 2022)
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3. Plants Disease Identification
Plants Disease Identification is easy to use. Just upload pictures of a leaf infested and the AI system of the app will detect the disease.
Currently supports a few crops, these are Apple, Blueberry, Cherry, Corn, Grape, Orange, Peach, Pepper, Potato, Raspberry, Soybean, Squash, Strawberry, and Tomato.
After the disease identification, you can contact your local agricultural expert for help.
Download for iPhone
4. Plantix
This app is awesome. You just need to take a picture of the plant that is affected and upload it to the app. And Boom! The app will automatically identify the disease and give you all the details about the disease and its cure (biologically and chemically).
Plantix is now available in 18 regional languages of India. You can ask questions in the farmer community of the app in your own language and get answers quickly.
This app can guide you to plant a new crop through its pieces of information like when to plant, the best soil, when to water, etc. And also can help to calculate the amount of fertilizers to add to the soil. Overall a handy app for farmers.
Download for Android, not available for iPhone.
5. Leaf Doctor
The main aim of this app is to find the health of the leaves of diseased plants. You can use this app to make sure your garden plants are healthy and disease-free. You can access the severity of the disease on leaves using leaf doctor.
Download for iPhone.
6. Crop Doctor
Crop doctor is built by the government of India to help farmers grow crops well. This app provides information about certain crops grown in this region. Also, gives information about any new govt. schemes for the farmers. The app supports both Hindi and English.
Download for Android.
7. Purdue Tree Doctor
Developed by experts at Purdue University, this plant doctor app does not work like magic just by uploading a picture. There is no AI feature in the app. But, the Purdue tree doctor app’s database has more than 1000 high-resolution photos of different plant diseases.
These high-resolution photos of plant diseases can help to identify the disease when you match it with the diseased plants. You can get help from Purdue University experts to manage the problem.
Download for iPhone
8. Plant Scope
An advanced app for farmers. This app uses a drone camera to find diseases in plants. This also reduces the burden of spending money on crop inspectors to keep looking at the plants.
The drone camera clicks photos of the crops and sends the data to the farmer’s mobile and to the app database. Using deep neural networks of the app dataset finds plant diseases and provides the best solutions.
The app marks any disease found in a particular location to alert farmers of the nearby area. Overall a cool app and new intervention are needed.
Download for iPhone
Best plant pest identification apps
All the apps we mentioned to some extent inform about pests. But, they are not specially made for pest control. So, we are covering the garden pest identification app separately.
1. Pacific Pests & Pathogens
This app works by asking questions to the farmer about the crop infested with pests. After a series of questions narrowed down until the perfect match is found. And then you can compare the photos given in the app with the infested crop.
How does it help? The app gives a sheet about the damage, biology and life cycle, and management.
Pacific Pests & Pathogens app is supported by ACIAR, the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research.
Download for Android or iPhone.
2. Plant diseases and pests
This app needs more data to give accurate results as it uses AI to identify diseases and pests in plants. They update their database every year with new pictures to enhance the AI to detect better any pests.
Taking a load of pictures of infested plants can help give a better result when you use this app.
Download for iPhone.
How can these plant disease identification apps help?
These plant disease identification apps can help you identify the disease and the cause behind it. After the identification of the disease, the appropriate treatment can be taken. Use your phone’s camera to take pictures of the affected plant leaves, branches, and stems. And then upload them to the app. The AI programs of the apps will help to identify the disease.
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Some common diseases of garden plants
Alternaria leaf blight: A group of fungal diseases found in garden plants like cabbage, and melon.
Angular Leaf Spot: Disease caused by bacteria found mostly in cucurbit crops.
Anthracnose: It is caused by fungi during the spring season when it is cool and wet.
Bacterial Blight: Found worldwide widely this disease is caused by bacteria living in the plant debris, canker, and soil. So, avoid overhead watering to keep leaves dry.
Bacterial Blight: Caused by bacteria mostly in prunus like cherries, and plums. This makes sunken patches of dead bark and small holes in leaves.
Black rot: Fungi that grow in hot and humid weather cause blackish discoloration and decay.
Downy Mildew: It is caused by fungus in a wet climate, yellow or brown mottling or spots on the leaves can be seen. The disease can be spread by air through spores.
Early Blight: Seen in old leaves of tomato and potato plants throughout the US. Fungus Alternaria solani creates small brown spots with concentric rings on leaves.
Gray Mold: Fungus Botrytis cinerea infects the flowering plants, fruits, and vegetables and kills the plants.
Late Blight: This is a very devastating disease for tomatoes and potatoes. Late blight can rot leaves, stems, and fruits, which causes total crop failure.
Powdery Mildew: A fungal growth on garden plants like pumpkin, squash, beans, and cucumbers. This fungus loves a warm, humid climate. At first, the yellowing of leaves starts and then dries up.
Pythium: A fungus-like organism that colonizes a plant by producing hyphae which are threadlike, filamentous cells that extract nutrients from the host plant.
Root Rot: It is caused when excess water is not drained out from the garden and this gives shelter for the fungus to grow. If left untreated root will rot and eventually kill the plant.
Rust: Fungal disease causes rust at the lower surface of the leaves of beans, and tomatoes.
Powdery mildew: Caused by white fungi, it produces powdery white spots on the foliage of plants. These white powders may get transferred from one to another plant by air.
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How do you identify diseases in house plants without any application?
Houseplants grown in pots/containers need to look after every week or once in a few weeks. Bugs can infest indoor plants, you can treat houseplants with a home remedy.
Common bugs/pests found on houseplants are Common brown scales, Mealybugs, Aphids, Common whitefly, Red spider mites, fungus, gnats, and thrips. You can watch this YouTube video on “common houseplant pests and ways to get rid of them” discussed by Amanda from a channel named “PLANTERINA”.
Houseplants are also infested by fungi like fungus mycelia causing Crown and Stem Rot, Grey molds, Powdery mildew, and White Molds. To protect your houseplants from these fungi, you can watch this beautiful YouTube video “Fungus on Houseplants” by Wandering Whittles.
Neem oil mentioned in this video is available on Amazon, you can check the price here.
Bacteria, viruses, protozoa, and other microbes can also cause diseases in houseplants.
Nutrient deficiency, nutrient toxicity, and water toxicity should also be considered when accessing plant diseases. To advocate these look for symptoms like stunted growth, death of plant tissue, or yellowing of the leaves caused by a reduced production of chlorophyll.
After you have identified the disease, take appropriate steps to save the plant from dying.
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Conclusion
Finding the cause of the ill-looking plants is easy. You do need to be a plant expert. Just observe the plants indoors or outdoors in your home. Most plant diseases can be identified just by observing the leaves carefully. Turn the leaves, and look at the soil if you find any attack of pests. You can also take the help of a house plant diagnosis app to find out the cause. Kill pests with organic pesticides prepared at home.
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