The Power of AI for Plant Pest & Disease Management and Better Biosecurity.

🌿AI isn’t just about enhancing existing practices—it’s enabling entirely new approaches to pest and disease management. From automating surveillance to optimizing intervention strategies, AI can empower decisionmakers from across the value chain and wider sector with insights that were previously out of reach.

In our most recent #ASEANFAWAction webinar, four experts discussed AI's role in shaping the future of plant health and pest and disease management. Speakers showed how AI technologies are revolutionizing how we gather, analyze and act on data. AI tools can rapidly sift through vast amounts of information—identifying pests, diagnosing disease symptoms, and evaluating environmental conditions with incredible speed and accuracy.

The session’s case studies made it clear: AI isn’t a future concept—it’s already delivering results and it has the potential to transform how we manage plant pests and diseases.

The session opened with an overview of AI’s growing role in biosecurity, emphasizing its value in pest and disease management and its potential to support sustainability and food security. Dr Rahul Rane from CSIRO’s Applied Genomics Initiative addressed the complex challenges of smarter pest control, particularly in identifying unknown species and reducing the heavy R&D workload.

He showcased how AI can transform how researchers gather insights and supercharge the speed of research and development. Dr Julie Lockwood from Rutgers University shared how machine learning and environmental DNA (eDNA) surveillance is being used to predict and monitor the spread of invasive species like the Spotted Lanternfly. Dr Anukiruthika and Dr Digvir S. Jayas (University of Lethbridge, Canada) explored how AI can address the challenges associated with managing pests in grain storage - demonstrating the use of real-time data and machine learning to monitor grain quality, adjust storage conditions, predict maintenance needs, and monitor for pest contamination - reducing spoilage and waste. Ryan Mitchell from InnerPlant shared how plant-based "living sensors" can detect stress before any visible symptoms appear. His work illustrates how AI, combined with IoT technology, can provide farmers with real-time insights to make proactive, data-driven decisions.

Overall, the webinar emphasized AI’s capacity to revolutionize biocontrol, invasive species monitoring, and sustainable agricultural practices through collaborative and data-driven approaches. While AI can be a transformative tool, all our speakers emphasised the need for human oversight.

The need for transparency, ethical considerations, and regulatory frameworks to ensure AI technologies complement rather than replace human expertise, and support trust, safety, and responsible innovation in agriculture and biocontrol domains remains critical. A question remaining is whether regulation and human oversight can keep up with the rapid pace of development in the AI world!

Watch all the videos from the session at https://www.aseanfawaction.org/digital-ipm