[Image appears of a black screen with text: Development of the BMSB AI app, Funded through the Biosecurity Innovation Programme, Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment]
[Image changes to show a close view of five stink bugs in a small box, and text appears at the centre: Developing a BMSB App]
Dr Michael Elias: So, stink bugs are quite a diverse group in Australia.
[Image changes to show Dr Michael Elias pulling a drawer of bugs out of a cabinet and then the camera zooms in on the drawer of bugs]
There are about 600 different native species in Australia, and potentially thousands of species we haven’t discovered yet.
[Image changes to show Michael placing the tray onto a table, and then the camera zooms in on the bugs in the tray]
Generally speaking, they’re quite specialist so they’ll only eat one or two species of plants, and because they’ve evolved here they will only eat native species.
[Image changes to show Michael’s hand as he points to various bugs in the tray, and then the camera zooms in on some of the bugs]
There are a few which are more generalist and they tend to be the bigger pests.
[Image changes to show Michael talking to the camera, and text appears: Dr Michael Elias, Australian National Insect Collection]
But the biggest pests are the ones which come from overseas because they’re adapted to eat crops. Most of our crops come from somewhere else so they’re adapted to eat those crops and they have no natural predators.
[Image changes to show a very close view of the brown marmorated stink bug]
Brown marmorated stink bug is originally from east Asia, especially China, especially the wetter regions of China.
[Image changes to show Michael talking to the camera, and then the image changes to show an aerial view looking down on vineyards]
Because it’s such a generalist species it targets a very wide variety of crops, especially stone fruit, apples, pears, tree nuts – especially hazelnuts, it’s a big, big pest on hazelnuts – and wine grapes and there’s several other smaller crops as well.
[Image changes to show a person working in a vineyard, and then the image changes to show an aerial view looking down on a cargo ship, and the camera zooms out a little]
The way they deal with most pests when they find them at the border is they go out and they collect them.
[Camera pans over the cargo ship, and then the image changes to show a shipping container held on a crane]
Because they’re not trained entomologists they send them back to an entomology lab. In the meantime that cargo has to be held in quarantine at the expense of the importer.
[Image changes to show Michael talking to the camera]
If the biosecurity officers had a tool which they could use to identify on the spot, you wouldn’t need to spend that much time, which is a lot of money for the various importers.
[Image changes to show Dr Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn sitting at a table looking at a stink bug in a box and talking to the camera, and text appears: Dr Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn, CSIRO Scientist, Centre for Australian National Biodiversity Research]
Dr Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn: This is the brown marmorated stink bug which is a major biosecurity threat for Australia. It’s a very generalist sap sucking insect that might cause immense damage to horticulture and agriculture if it establishes in Australia.
[Images move through to show a close view of trays of stink bugs, charts showing pictures of stink bugs, and then the camera zooms in on the trays of stink bugs again]
There are about 600 known Australian native species of stink bugs but there may be thousands of undescribed species too.
[Image changes to show Alexander talking to the camera]
The critical thing about invasive species is that they don’t have any natural enemies here so they may be able to do a lot more damage than the native ones that are actually controlled.
[Images move through to show camera equipment, and then the camera zooms in on the camera photographing a stink bug]
The present project is funded by the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, through a biosecurity invasion programme.
[Images move through to show a photo of the stink bug on a computer screen, a researcher working on the computer looking at the stink bug photo, and then the camera equipment again]
We are creating an image recognition model that will allow inspectors and biosecurity officers to distinguish the brown marmorated stink bug and other potential pest species from closely related and similar native species.
[Images move through to show the camera equipment photographing the stink bug, a researcher working on the computer, and then a stink bug shown on a Smartphone screen]
That will allow them to make decisions about cleaning cargo, for example, about eradication actions, and will ultimately safeguard Australian, the Australian economy and agriculture.
[Camera zooms in on the Smartphone screen app showing the stink bug]
We have produced this AI model but to really make it useable to people we are putting it into a Smartphone app that the Department of Agriculture can then use at the border at ports to identify specimens in the future.
[Image changes to show Alexander talking to the camera]
I myself am an optimist, and actually the first model that we produced, and that we put into this prototype app here was a wheat seed identification model because I’d come out of the wheat seed identification project for the Department. And when we showed this to our partners at the Department of Agriculture, Water and Environment it turned out that yes the principle of this identification app was great but the actual really concrete problem at the moment were the stink bugs so that is where we then turned our attention next.
[Image continues to show Alexander talking to the camera and a female can be seen in the background working on the computer with the stink bug photo on the screen]
But ultimately an app like this can have all manner of identification models in it. We could have one in the future for moths, we could have one for wheat seeds again, we could have one for rust fungi, potentially anything that lends itself to being visually recognised by the expert can also then be visually recognised by the artificial intelligence.
[Image changes to show a black screen and credits and appear at the bottom, and the Coat of Arms and text appears above: Australian Government, Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment]
