How to access TOMcast™ and other crop management tools at www.vegtools.ca

Dr. Rishi R. Burlakoti, Research Lead and Plant Pathologist, Weather INnovations Consulting LP

Weather INnovations is currently providing several crop management tools for Ontario Vegetable Growers at www.vegtools.ca. The website provides fungicide timing advisories including TOMcast™ for early blight, Septoria, and Anthracnose and late blight advisory for tomato growers. Fungicide timing advisories are also available to manage foliar blights of carrot and celery as well as purple blotch of asparagus. The website also provides growing degree day-based scouting advisories for 12 different pests of several vegetable crops including cole crops, tomatoes, onions, garlic, carrots, leafy vegetables, snap beans and cucurbits. Without login, growers can get information on the available crop management tools as well as short description of diseases and pests. To get site-specific advisories, growers require to login and register their fields. All these site-specific tools can be accessed without subscription fee.

The guidelines to access site-specific TOMcast™ and other tools are described below:

• Step 1: Create an account and login. In the top right at www.vegtools.ca, there is the tab ‘Free Sign up’. You can create your account adding required information.
• Step 2: Use the interactive map and follow the instructions to register your first field and crops. Once you login, click the tab ‘Plot Field’ to locate your field. You can either type the location name or GPS coordinates. You can also use interactive Google map to plot your field. Once you plotted your field, add your crop clicking the tab ‘Add Crop’ and fill the required information.
• Step 3: Begin using the site and crop-specific tools.

Accessing TOMcast™ and late blight advisories:

Add tomatoes as your crop. You will see the ‘TOMcast™’, ‘Late blight’ and ‘Insect’. To access the TOMcast™ DSV graph, click ‘TOMcast’. You will also get TOMcast™-based spray guideline as well as daily DSV values. You can also update your spray date using the tab ‘UPDATE SPRAY DATE’ — the accumulated DSV starts recalculating after the spray date. The late blight advisory can also be accessed clicking the tab ‘Late blight’ (indicating how favorable conditions are for late blight if the pathogen is present, which is not part of the forecast).

If you have further questions regarding the information on the website and accessing crop management advisories, feel free to contact Dr. Rishi Burlakoti at Weather INnovations (email- rburlakoti@weatherinnovations.com and phone: 519-352-5334, x 225).