TOMcast®

Developed by Dr. Ron Pitblado, TOMcast™ is a disease-warning model which establishes a timed fungicide spraying program for Early Blight, Septoria Leaf Spot and Anthracnose on processing tomatoes. The model uses temperature and leaf wetness to determine optimal timing of spray. Disease control is managed from the accumulation of daily Disease Severity Values (DSV’s), which results in a recommendation for fungicide applications.

In partnership with the Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers and several other sponsors, Weather Innovations uses an extensive network of weather stations to deliver the TOMcast™ program. Online DSV maps and accumulated DSV values provide growers with timely information for optimizing their spray programs.

The following map is an example of a TOMcast™ output for Ontario, with the colour shading refering to the daily DSV and the number indicating the accumulated DSV.