Digital transformation in Date Palm management: 24/7 Monitoring for Red Palm Weevil
Protect your date plantation from Red Palm Weevil (RPW)
Red Palm Weevil (R. ferrugineus) is a rapidly growing problem in date palm, causing millions of dollars of economic loss each year and endangering the livelihood of 50 million farmers (FAO).
Estimated cost of RPW in
Middle East and North Africa
>$1B
Tree inspections
Manual trapping
Loss due to tree death
Insecticide treatments
The Problems Red Palm Weevils cause
Farm owners and public body officials have told us that RPW is present everywhere, and a key challenge for them is to identify high activity hot spots. They believe that existing trapping mechanisms and manual tree inspections are not fit for purpose.
Spotta's Solution
An early warning system for RPW
See how it works.
Internet activated dry traps attract RPW and transmit information wirelessly
Managers see real time RPW activity on their phone and laptop
Labour and farmers receive automatic instructions
They go straight to the most impacted parts of the farms to do treatments
Decision makers track the progress of the control program in real time
Low response time to RPW activity prevents damage
Benefits of Spotta’s digital solution
Control RPW spread
Prevent tree death
Increase date production & quality
Grow value of exports
Manage contractor performance
Tested & verified in the Middle East
The system was subjected to rigorous testing in randomised block design trials in date farms. Despite being very low service, Spotta provided equivalent or slightly better trapping compared to the high maintenance traditional wet bucket traps used today.