When Lucid was first developed almost 20 years ago, the main focus was on capturing the expertise of taxonomists to develop Lucid-based, interactive identification tools for a range of different organisms and users. More recently, the range of applications of Lucid has broadened. In particular, agronomists and plant protection experts have been using Lucid to develop diagnostic tools for use by advisors and farmers to help determine the cause of crop disorders and what to do about them.

The MyCrop (https://www.agric.wa.gov.au/mycrop) team within the Western Australian Department of Agriculture and Food has developed a series of interactive tools to bring “crop diagnostics to the paddock”.

Currently, with funds from the Grains Research and Development Corporation, online diagnostic tools and apps for Android and Apple smartphones and tablets have been developed for wheat, barley, canola, lupin, and field pea crops. A Lucid-based tool, MySoil, is also available to help growers identify the soil type on their farm and to access information about important soil issues.

As well as providing a diagnostic tool to identify production constraints, the MyCrop apps also provide detailed fact sheets about each constraint, including management options and where to access further information. The apps also include other tools. For instance, the Wheat app includes a Variety Selector that helps growers choose appropriate varieties for their Agzone and desired yield and disease risk trait. A Crop Check and Economic calculator tool are also available.

To help first-time users, the MyCrop team have recently developed a tutorial that demonstrates the main features of the Diagnostic key. They have done this by using the key to address a real-life problem. You can access the tutorial here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN9OduqDzzM)

Since being released a year or so ago, there have been a total of over 1,500 downloads of both Android and iOS versions of the wheat app.