It said that it’s has been a long, wet and difficult winter and primary industry support agencies say there is help out there for growers to identify exactly what is causing any problems in their crops.

The extended wet and cool weather has increased disease exposure in winter crops and the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) is urging farmers to seek advice from their scientists.

The GRDC's Sharon O'Keefe wants growers to take samples of disease impacted crops and send them to plant pathologists and other specialist staff to identify what the problem is, and what the solution might be.

"We decided to really remind farmers that there are good researchers available at GRDC, who really want to see these samples of diseased plants." she said. "It's pretty straightforward, you just cut few samples and put them in a brown paper bag and send them off to the appropriate researcher.

"The GRDC website has a lot of the addresses and phone numbers, depending the disease."

Farmers compare pest photos on Twitter

O'Keefe said the other way farmers were managing disease and pest issues was through social media. "This is something that grew out of an app we have called 'Grower Notes Alert', which gives farmers an alert when there is an outbreak of a disease or a pest.

"As part of that trial, we were providing growers with macro lenses for their smart phones, so they could take close up images of their crops and send us images of what was going on, and now I am seeing quite a lively conversation in my Twitter feed, as farmers post photographs and try and work out what a pest might be.

"People are learning from it, I've seen a lot of debates on Twitter about what type of species certain things are, there's been things like a little bit of a guessing competition about a certain two-spotted mite and what it was."

Source: abc.com.au

Photo: Twitter/Chris Walsh