🚨 A new threat is emerging in Switzerland. The Japanese Beetle (Popillia japonica) has been spreading in Ticino since its first detection in 2017, and the first significant crop damage was observed as early as 2020. Faced with this urgency, Agroscope chose to rely on our Pollenn® platform to establish a coordinated response at the national level.

🎉 We are proud to announce the launch of the Pollenn® interactive map, available at www.japanesebeetle.ch, developed by In-Finitude SA on behalf of Agroscope. This innovative tool enables the entire Swiss population to directly report their field observations, providing plant protection authorities with a real-time overview of the pest’s spread across the entire territory.

🤖 To further enhance the reliability of reports, we collaborated with the Advanced Learning and Research Institute (ALaRI) at the Università della Svizzera italiana in Lugano to integrate an AI-powered image identification tool. Each observation submitted by a citizen can thus be quickly analysed and validated, reducing the risk of misidentification.

⚠️ The challenge is considerable : the Japanese Beetle is extremely difficult to eradicate once established. Controlling the adults, responsible for the majority of damage to vineyards, fruit trees and numerous forest species, is nearly impossible. The strategy therefore relies on early detection during the flight period from June to September, in order to locate egg-laying zones and eliminate larvae through biological control measures in autumn.

🗺️ This is precisely the type of challenge Pollenn® was designed for : transforming citizen mobilisation into actionable geospatial data, in service of the authorities and the protection of Swiss agricultural biodiversity.

🌍 This partnership with Agroscope marks an important milestone in our development and confirms the relevance of our SaaS geomonitoring approach for invasive species for public stakeholders at both national and international levels.