Florida supercomputer will help limit avocado laurel wilt disease

Researchers at the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences are developing an app to pick the best regional treatment options for the state’s avocado laurel wilt disease.

To help develop the app, scientists are using the HiPerGator, a supercomputer on the main University of Florida campus in Gainesville, according to a news release.

Laurel wilt disease is spread by ambrosia beetles, and the beetles can be spread when people move infested wood products such as firewood, according to the release.

“This network analysis app will aid policy makers by providing input about how such things as subsidies or penalties for disease management are likely to affect growers’ management decisions and resulting disease spread,” Berea Etherton, a doctoral student in plant pathology at the university, said in the release. “Better regional management as a whole benefits individual growers.” 

Scientists hope to gain better regional control of laurel wilt through machine learning for analysis of satellite-images, according to the release.
The computer can analyze large data sets rapidly.

“In the next steps for the project, we plan to integrate satellite image analysis and disease recognition to support decision makers considering the best management strategies,” Karen Garrett, University of Florida professor, said in the release. “The computational demands of the machine-learning tools in this project will benefit from the new HiPerGator resources.”

Florida avocados are grown almost entirely in Miami-Dade County, and about 80% of Florida avocados are sold outside of the state, according to the release.