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ARS Home » Southeast Area » Fort Pierce, Florida » U.S. Horticultural Research Laboratory » Subtropical Plant Pathology Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #271640
Title: i Planta

Author
item Bausher, Michael

Submitted to: Software and User Manual Public Release
Publication Type: Other
Publication Acceptance Date: 9/1/2011
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary: An application (app) designed to accommodate common calculations for large scale vegetable, open field farming, or small gardens. Can be used to find the amount of pesticide, fertilizer, plants (including grafted), plastic mulch or added soil products that need to be applied to your plots at any given date-stamped time. Use plant number and spacing to determine the area of land needed. An added feature is the ability to calculate the total linear distance in row feet of planted area. All calculations are interchangeable in English and Metric units at the push of a button. If disease or insect areas exist, notes on the subject can be entered and stored for future reference in the logger. All notes and calculations can be sent via email. In addition, you can save your current location and return to it using GPS coordinates. This program accepts data from all forms of field plantings and is designed to be an overall aid to track growing plants by using a cell phone or tablet to transfer data on the fly to an email address.

Technical Abstract: This application was designed for farmers, agriculture researchers, and gardeners. The application includes a calculator, a data logger, and a GPS mapping function. It was designed for vegetable farming but can be used for open field applications. The calculator solves for the amount of pesticide, land, or plants based on the information provided. The user chooses to input either US or metric units, but the end calculations are given in both unit systems along with a timestamp and the ability to email the results with the touch of a button. The data logger stores information that is manually entered by the user and also includes a timestamp. Easily input the amount of pesticide you applied that day or a disease you observed, for example, and this information will be saved for later. You can view a specific entry by the date, or view all entries together in a log format and then easily email this information. The GPS mapping function can store the current location, which is named by the user. After traveling away from the location, the app will give street directions to the specified saved location. This is designed to find and label farms for agriculture researchers.