Estimate, a New iPad Application for Assessment of Plant Disease Severity Using Photographic Standard Area Diagrams

Assessment of disease severity is a foundational component of plant pathology and essential for robust disease management. Researchers often estimate disease severity using standard area diagrams (SADs) that are reference images representing disease severity in percentage increments. SADs provide assessments of disease severity that are more accurate, precise, and reliable than other methods. Although specific SADs have been constructed for many plant diseases, they often depict severity in unrealistic black-and-white or grayscale illustrations. SADs are also usually printed, static references that can burden data collection in the field and require data to be transferred manually to a computer spreadsheet for manipulation. This data entry process and verification are prone to errors and require additional inputs of time and labor. We developed a new iPad application (app) called Estimate for researchers and crop managers for their use on a mobile device at the field-level for assessing plant disease severity in order to collect data or aid in treatment decisions. The app is a repository for digital, photographic SADs and offers savings in time for data collection and processing. Estimate allows users to select a disease from a prepopulated list and specify the reference disease images in either logarithmic or linear intervals. Data may be collected as the midpoint of an interval (ordinal) or as 1% increments (continuous). Users then select among photographic images by touching those that best match the observed disease severity on successive samples. Estimate allows data entry at the plant and leaf hierarchical levels within plots and subplots. Alternatively, data may be collected on single sampling units with an undefined experimental design (i.e., 1 to x leaves). The user may inspect and e-mail the final data in comma-separated values format for analysis using conventional spreadsheet software. Estimate was released with SADs for assessing the severity of Cercospora leaf spot in red and yellow table beet cultivars. A list of collaborators and up-to-date list of SADs included in Estimate is available at http://evade.pppmb.cals.cornell.edu/estimate/ . SADs for other diseases will be added to Estimate as they become available. Estimate is available for free download from iTunes ( https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=1193605571&mt=8 ) and is compatible with an iPad Air 2 or equivalent using iOS 9.0 or greater.