Based on work being carried out by US-based Green Dog Pest Service of Seattle, that might not be as far fetched as it sounds. HortiDaily reports that chief executive Deanna Kjorlien is training dogs to respond to the distinctive odour of different greenhouse pests.
She said, “Most of our dogs are rescues. Belgian Malinois are intelligent and motivated working dogs, and for that reason, this breed can be too much for a family to manage. We train them and give them a job. However, we also train other breeds, as I believe that all dogs can do the job when properly educated.”
The company, which originally started by targeting domestic pests such as bed bugs, is now working across North America having been contacted during the pandemic, by a cannabis grower in Canada who wanted help detecting root aphids.
“Around that same time, a California cannabis grower also reached out to us about a different aphid species,” explained Deanna. This was shortly followed by a Mexican bell pepper producer. “Despite the fact we had just started to expand our business into the greenhouse sector, they wanted to give it a try. So, I trained the dogs, and they joined the Mexican farm team. I go back for a visit every now and then,” she added.
The dogs are trained not to touch the plants, and only react to one specific pest odour, so are not affected by beneficial insects for example. One limit is the physical size of the dog, so they cannot detect pests at the top of high vine crops for example but working alongside human agronomists or crop scouts helps to overcome such limitations.
Deanna also sees no reason to limit their use to greenhouse crops. “Open fields, flower greenhouses, anything that grows can be subject to pests and diseases, and I have not yet encountered a pest or root disease that didn’t have a specific smell. I see a lot of promise with using dogs for root diseases, which hurt growers in many sectors and are relatively easy for dogs to detect,” she said.