Catch disease and pest outbreaks before they spread

The problem: by the time you see the symptoms, it’s already too late

For most tropical crops, the gap between “the first plant shows symptoms” and “a third of the field is affected” is measured in days, not weeks. Anthracnose on chili. Sheath blight on rice. Leaf curl virus on tomato. By the time a worker spots the lesion, the spore load has already moved.

Spraying after symptoms appear costs more, works less, and almost always means a hit to yield. The farmers who stay ahead are the ones who treat before the outbreak — based on the weather conditions and field signs that predict it. The hard part is knowing when those conditions actually line up.

How Peladang’s alert engine works

The platform monitors seven of the highest-impact threats for Malaysian farms:

• Rice Blast & Sheath BlightTriggered by humid nights above 22 °C combined with leaf wetness — common across the padi belt during monsoon transition.
• Chili AnthracnoseWet leaves + warm afternoons drive the spore cycle. The risk score jumps before any visible spots appear on fruit.
• Powdery MildewDry days followed by humid nights — a classic Cameron Highlands pattern for chili and tomato.
• Aphid Infestation, Leaf Curl Virus, Leaf FolderEach monitor blends weather signals with your scouting counts. Three days of unattended growth from a low-level count is enough to flip the severity to High.

Four severity levels, one decision

Every alert has the same shape: a clear severity badge (Critical → High → Moderate → Low), the conditions driving it, and the specific action it recommends. You don’t have to translate weather data into a treatment decision yourself — the alert tells you whether to spray, scout further, or just keep watching.

The engine deduplicates within a 24-hour window, so you never get spammed when the same risk persists. New conditions, new alert. Same conditions, silent.

What farmers actually do with it

The first thing most farmers notice: they stop spraying on a fixed schedule. With alerts in hand, calendar-based spraying becomes condition-based spraying. That alone cuts chemical use noticeably — and the savings show up in the expense report the same week.

The second thing: alerts become a shared language between you and the field team. A worker doing the morning round can submit a scouting count from their phone; the next risk score reflects it. The supervisor sees the alert; the spray happens that afternoon. No phone calls, no chasing.

Built for the real world

Alerts arrive on mobile (no app install required — it runs in the browser) and on the dashboard. Available in Bahasa Melayu, Bahasa Indonesia, English, and 中文. Free, like everything in Peladang.

If you’re curious about how the risk scoring math works, we wrote a full guide: Pest & Disease Risk Scoring — A Practical Guide.