Automated scouting of whitefly and thrips

An increasing number of Dutch greenhouse growers are automating their pest monitoring with Horticoop’s Scoutbox Service for more accurate monitoring of the whitefly population.

The Scoutbox is a portable steel box with a digital camera and trap holder. Because of the fixed distance between the trap and the lens, the camera always makes razor-sharp images of the insertable trap cards.

The employee who normally scouts and counts the traps now only has to put the cards in the box, take a picture and returns the traps to their place.

After scouting, the Scoutbox uploads the photos to developer SoilCares in Wageningen, who performs an analysis with special software.

The software reads the trap's location code, recognizes and counts the whiteflies and calculates the difference from the previous measurement. The result is shown in numbers and color codes on a map of the greenhouse. In this way you can see at a glance where things are going well, where you have to be alert and where you need to intervene. And this way you easily build a historical database.