The harmful organism real-time monitoring system developed by the Zhongguancun-based Beijing Ecoman Biotech Co Ltd has been put into use at Beijing's Haidian Park and Cuihu National Wetland Park. It is estimated that the system will cover the entire Haidian district in 2013. The system is said to be the only long distance harmful organism real-time monitoring device in the world that can do computing work,

At present, China is still relying on manual methods to monitor pests, which results in a heavy workload and a low-level monitoring process for the plant protection monitoring staff.

For example, in Haidian district there are more than 2,000 manual pest-monitoring sites against the harmful white moth but the monitoring feedback usually cannot be delivered in a timely manner.

With an outdoor monitoring device, the monitoring area can range from 2 to 3.33 hectares at a time. Given the fact that Haidian Park occupies an area of around 2.67 hectares, it will only need 35 intelligent monitoring sites to form a pest-monitoring network for the whole park.

"Applying the technology will help upgrade the monitoring level on garden and forest pests and improve the timeliness and accuracy of the forecast of harmful organisms," says Wu Chengliang, deputy director of the Haidian Garden and Afforestation Bureau.

The system consists of a pest trapping device and a network client terminal. It was developed by Dr Du Jinping and his team after three years of experiments. Dr Du had spent years overseas before returning to China.

Currently the widely adopted practice for pest monitoring is to use a lure agent. With this mode, computing cannot be done and real-time data uploading is impossible. The new monitoring system, by making use of varied pest luring agents, can target a certain kind of pest to the monitoring device and count the number. The system offers directional trapping, classified statistics, real-time report transferring, and long-distance monitoring and pre-warning.

The device can also identify the specific location of the diseases in the park as well as the exact time when the disease first broke out. This makes it possible to target spray pesticide and reduce contamination to the environment.

In developed countries, environmentally friendly plant protection takes up 20 percent of the total plant protection programs, while the percentage in China is currently no more than 2 percent.

"China is in great urgency for green plant protection. That is why I chose to come back to start a business here," said Dr Du.

Edited by Chen Zhilin and Emily Cheng