WeedScan is a new weed identification app that uses AI to help identify weeds for better land management. The mobile and web-based app is supported by the Centre for Invasive Species Solutions, Australia’s national science agency – CSIRO, the NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI) and the South Australian, Queensland and Victorian Governments. It allows users to identify, report and map priority weeds simply by uploading a photo of the suspected weed.
The app has been trained on over 120,000 weed images, and has the potential to make weeds identification, notification and management more efficient. This is similar technology to tha used by the iNaturalist Computer Vision aid to idnetification.
A key feature is that the weeds identifiable by the app include many new and emerging priority weeds that may not be known to most people.
WeedScan is a potential game changer which could help ramp up efforts to better manage invasive weeds.