Why is preventive spray better than curative spray?
India is an agriculture-based nation, where more than fifty percent of the population is dependent on agriculture. In the course of crop production, many diseases will threaten the crop. To win the battle against the disease, farmers need to spray certain synthetic pesticides. Year-on-year, indiscriminate use of pesticides causes enormous impacts on agriculture, environment and ecosystems, biodiversity, communities, and socio-economic sectors.
Pesticides application in the right quantity at the right time not only helps in managing diseases but also cuts down the cost, number of sprays, and ultimately its effect on the environment. Management of plant disease needs to start with a master plan for its prevention. The value of preventive sprays is a great deal much lesser than the value of curative sprays.
Microclimatic conditions play a significant role in disease development. Plant diseases have optimum microclimatic conditions for them to infect and complete their life cycle on plants. Recognizing this, prevention becomes less difficult and more effective.
Spores are like the “seeds” of pathogens that live in dormant or non-reproductive stages in the infected plant debris and in the soil when there are no ideal microclimatic conditions for its growth and development. In general, foliar pathogen spores need favorable microclimatic conditions like high humidity for a prolonged period, favorable canopy temperature, and leaf wetness to germinate. Whereas soil-borne pathogen spores require favorable soil moisture and soil temperature to germinate. Therefore, keeping an eye on microclimatic conditions with the help of sensors will be the first step to begin crop disease prevention.
What is a preventive spray?
Preventive spray is the spray taken before the pathogen arrives or begins to develop. The spray will act as a protective barrier and reduce the initial germination and penetration of spores into the plant system thereby helping in preventing further infection.
What is a curative spray?
Curative spray is the spray taken at the early growth of the pathogen in the plant tissue. Depending upon the spray composition, the spray will be effective for a few days after infection occurs. If the microclimatic conditions are in favor of the pathogen, then more sprays are required to control the pathogen growth. Curative sprays are not effective against more advanced latent infections and in such cases there will be crop failure due to heavy infestation.
Therefore, preventive spray are taken before a pathogen could actually harms the crop and are most effective in crop disease management.
How can farmers make a decision for preventive spray?
In the 21st century, technology has become more advanced. Data-driven precision agriculture farming is gaining more importance than conventional farming. Due to climate change, farmers are switching from traditional methods of crop calendar to dynamic climate smart farming. Technology like Fasal, an IoT-based and AI-powered platform, helps Indian farmers to get farm level data through sensors installed in their farm, along with farm level, crop specific and crop stage specific actionable intelligence delivered to their mobile app.
Based on microclimatic conditions prevailing inside the farm, the Fasal system will calculate the day-to-day risk progression of the individual disease, i.e., high or medium or low. On the basis of risk, it notifies the farmers to take the decisions on preventative spray towards disease management and helps to cut down the input cost on curative sprays.
In order to increase the spray efficacy of the chemicals and to avoid pesticide drift, Fasal system also indicates favorable spray timing by forecasting the microclimatic conditions of the farm.
Fasal’s technology prepares the farmers to take low-cost preventive action to save the crop before the actual damage and on an average reduces the use of chemical sprays by 15–30%.
