Michigan State University is a public research university boasting approximately 50,000 enrolled students. Originally founded as an agricultural college, the MSU Department of Animal Science remains a pioneer in agricultural research.

Michigan is home to a very large grape-growing industry. Vineyard owners and workers must cooperate to manage, track and control insect infestations and disease outbreaks as they arise.

Our Pesticide Management for Sustainable Vineyards system provides a solution for workers in both the field and in the office.

When a field worker opens the app on their Android or iOS device, they can immediately view upcoming tasks, such as spraying a new pesticide onto their crop. When performing these actions, pertinent information like weather conditions and GPS location is collected. While in the field, workers can take pictures of new infestations as they arise, reporting them to management.

Vineyard managers can view this information on our system webpage, as well as automatically generate records of pesticide use for the USDA or MDARD. They can view maps of their field with up-to-date information about current infestations and outbreaks, and assign new tasks to their workers to mitigate them.

Our system also calculates a risk factor for each pesticide based on the unique circumstances of each vineyard and field. This allows vineyard owners to select pesticides that are effective, sustainable, and safe for both their employees and their consumers.

Our software streamlines the process of identifying, mitigating, and reporting pests and chemical usage for the grape-growing industry, and creates a repository of information for further research into Michigan’s ecology.

The Pesticide Management for Sustainable Vineyards back end is a server utilizing a LAMP stack. The application is written in PHP for web, Java for Android, and Swift for iOS.