Digital Crop Doc, a digital diagnostics service for Minnesota producers

Angie Peltier

Digital Crop Doc (DCD) is a UMN Extension website on which people can supply important contextual information and up to 10 pictures of a diseased crop for which they are seeking diagnosis and management recommendations. This website and the submission form housed on it are mobile-friendly, meaning that corn producers or the ag professionals that work with them can make a submission from the
field. One or more of 10 UMN Extension specialists and educators then provide a diagnosis and management recommendations to the submitter at no cost. DCD went “live” in July 2020 and, soon after, the first submission came from a corn producer in Clay County. Even though the program ran through September, there were a grand total of 4 corn submissions in 2020. Expanding the use and usefulness of this service to

MN corn producers are essential to meet the multiple goals of this program, which include: 1) to provide a service to corn producers in Minnesota to help them better identify and manage economically important diseases of corn, 2) to better determine the spread within Minnesota of some of the pathogens responsible for new and emerging corn diseases and 3) to collect data provided by DCD submissions in a ‘living’ database to better understand which disease or pest issues are becoming increasingly prevalent or damaging and should be targeted for additional UMN Extension-led research and education.