Insects are indispensable for
pollinating many crops. But they can also be a pest that consumes the plants
that feed humanity. A problem that will increase with the climate crisis: the
higher the temperature, the greater the crop losses due to insect pests. These
animals already consume between 5 and 20% of the main cereal crops.
Insecticides have been used to contain this problem, chemicals with a cost to
food producers and negative impacts on human health and the environment.
Insects also evolve in the face of this threat and end up developing resistance
to these chemicals.
One way to make their use more efficient and reduce the negative externalities of pesticides is to monitor the pest population and the weather to adjust the amount, frequency, and timing of pesticide application. This limits the use of pesticides to when they are really needed. But this solution is also costly and inefficient at present. In view of this situation, Chilean commercial engineer Antonio Cabreira has set himself a goal: to democratize and make the optimization of pesticide use more accessible. He says, "We can promote the use of technology to generate more productive and sustainable crops."
His answer to the challenge of improving pesticide use is called Neltume, a remote phytosanitary monitoring service that automates the surveillance of insect pheromone traps and collects climate data to maximize pest control. Its system generates recommendations for more efficient insecticide applications. Thanks to the potential of this breakthrough, the young man has been chosen among the 35 winners of MIT Technology Review's Innovators Under 35 Latin America 2022 awards in Spanish.
Because of its ability to keep insects at bay and produce fruit during the boreal winter, Chile is a world leader in the production of table grapes and cherries, explains the engineer. Neltume develops its own hardware and software with more low-cost stations that monitor insects with recurring photos. It also records weather conditions. This real-time remote monitoring allows agrochemicals to be applied at the best time. In addition, it is easy to install by the farmer himself.
Cabreira explains the advantages of Neltume: "It can significantly reduce pest surveillance costs and optimize the application of pest control products, minimizing production losses, fruit residues, and environmental risks. For the first time since the pest was recorded, walnut producers who resorted to Neltume had no losses by the apple moth and decreased by one third annual applications of agrochemical inputs to achieve suppress the pest population.
The engineer already has important multinational agri-food companies as clients, and his advances have been validated by the Instituto de Investigaciones Agropecuarias (INIA). With this innovation, Cabreira seeks to help solve an important productive and environmental problem in more Latin American countries such as Argentina and Peru. The young man wants to export his products to Europe, where the pests they control also consume crops in a context of increasing global food insecurity.
