The International Cooperation and Development Fund’s technical mission to Guatemala is utilizing drones and biochips to assist diplomatic allies Guatemala and Belize in combating Fusarium wilt, also known as Panama disease.
Latin America and the Caribbean are the leading exporters of bananas across the 35 nations that grow the fruit globally, and Guatemala and Belize both annually export US$1 billion of bananas, the mission said.
Fusarium oxysporum was first detected in the region after an outbreak in Colombia in 2019 and by 2023 it has spread to Peru and Venezuela, the mission said, adding that further spread of the disease to the north would lead to severe losses for all banana producing nations in Central America.
Photo: CNA
The mission said that it had invited top experts in plant disease and pests, as well as biomedical engineers, to visit Guatemala, Belize and Panama, and hold a seminar in Guatemala City on Tuesday to share Taiwan’s successes in plant disease and pest prevention with local governments and agricultural research facilities.
National Chung Hsing University Department of Mechanical Engineering professor Wang Gou-jen (王國禎), who attended the seminar, said Taiwan had used drones carrying Nvidia artificial intelligence (AI) chips for effective monitoring of crop planting areas.
Image recognition technology and AI analysis enable the drones to detect abnormalities in the area, Wang said, adding that the drones would then upload the information to cloud servers or users’ mobile phones.
The technology allows farmers to take immediate action against pests and plant diseases, Wang said.
National Chung Hsing University Graduate Institute of Biomedical Engineering professor Chang Cheng-chung (張健忠) cited Taiwan’s experience during the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing it to develop biochips that can, with the help of big data, detect pests and pesticide residue within 10 minutes.
Previously, samples would have to be sent to a laboratory, where, using expensive equipment and convoluted processes, examinations were performed to detect whether there were pests or pesticide residue, Chang said, adding that the process was not only laborious, but was also only able to detect one kind of pesticide per examination.
With more pesticides using mixed substances, it would take four to five days to run such tests, Wang said.
Mission representatives said government officials at the seminar had been greatly interested in a rapid screening kit for Fusarium wilt developed by National Taiwan University professor Hung Ting-hsuan (洪挺軒), and models developed by the National Pingtung University of Science and Technology Work Dog Training Center that train dogs to detect the smell of brown root rot.
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