The green peach aphid: it is a small fly that a farmer would rather not see in the field. “If a farmer sees the fly among his crops, they will preventively spray all plants with pesticides, because they do not know exactly which plants they are on,” says Klaas Dijkstra of NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences.
There must be another way, thought Dijkstra, who works on artificial intelligence at the university. “We conduct research with cameras where we photograph the fly. We then enter all those photos into a computer and teach it what is the louse and what is not. Then we use AI to see if we can recognize the fly. You can then indicate where the fly is located and to which plant pesticides should be applied, without having to do this to all plants.”