{"id":305743,"date":"2026-02-19T08:10:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T08:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/305743\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T08:10:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T08:10:08","slug":"dubliners-spyware-innovation-helps-save-californias-nut-farmers-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/305743\/","title":{"rendered":"Dubliner\u2019s spyware innovation helps save California\u2019s nut farmers \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dubliner Eamonn Keogh was inspired by tech straight out of a spy novel to set up a company in California<\/a>. <\/p>\n

His start-up serves the Golden State\u2019s high-value almond industry by alerting growers to the presence of their leading insect foe \u2013 the navel orangeworm moth. <\/p>\n

Keogh designed a smart trap that taps a barely believable phenomenon, seen in a Mission Impossible film, that allows window vibrations to be converted into sound. <\/p>\n

\u201cAs a kid, I remember reading about how spies could use laser beams to reflect vibrations in the window glass of an embassy and listen in,\u201d recalls Keogh. \u201cI wondered if a mosquito flew past the beam, would you hear the mosquito instead of the ambassador?\u201d <\/p>\n

In California, his company FarmSense created a sensor that identifies an insect as it flies through a beam of light. Information is transmitted to farmers to tell them what insects are flying among their almond or pistachio trees.<\/p>\n

The farmers are especially interested in the navel orangeworm. Knowing when males and females of this moth will start cavorting among the trees allows growers to deploy a chemical distraction \u2013 harmless to other insects \u2013 to reduce moth larvae numbers. <\/p>\n

Keogh grew up in Kimmage, \u201cthe youngest and best-looking of nine children\u201d, with his father working in the Guinness brewery. \u201cI left school at 15 and worked at painting cars. I hated it. I came to America on a green card,\u201d he recalls. <\/p>\n

\"AA sensor devised by Prof Eamonn Keogh of FarmSense that detects serious pests damaging California’s nut crops. <\/p>\n

After working in various mechanical jobs and returning to school, he worked his way up to become professor of computer science at the University of California, Riverside. He loves academic life, but later made the hard decision to take a break.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not an entrepreneur at heart. It\u2019s not in my DNA \u2013 but I thought this was such an important problem, and we had an answer,\u201d says Keogh. <\/p>\n

With a lifelong interest in nature, Keogh hopes he can reduce pesticide use in orchards. The number-one foe of almond harvests is the navel orangeworm, whose caterpillars munch through almonds and also leave them vulnerable to a fungal infection. <\/p>\n

Buzz sensor <\/p>\n

The new sensor relies on the telltale buzz of insects. Compare, for instance, the high-pitched whine of an annoying mosquito to the low buzz of a summer bumblebee. \u201cThere\u2019s a kind of uniqueness to the sound that a given species makes,\u201d says Keogh. <\/p>\n

This discovery was made fortuitously when a student said she could tell mosquitoes apart by their buzz. \u201cWe thought that was impossible, so we blind tested and found out she could.\u201d It helped that she was a Thai national piano champion with perfect pitch. <\/p>\n

\u2018The walking around looking at sticky traps is very, very time consuming and inaccurate. Now a grower can sit at his morning coffee and see on his phone that he has a problem in his north field\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Eamonn Keogh, FarmSense<\/p>\n

The sensor identifies insects through their wing beats. The algorithm is simple enough, according to Keogh. The secret sauce is the millions of lab measurements he has recorded of insects with the sensor. <\/p>\n

The measurements were taken under various wind, pressure and temperature conditions, because a mosquito might fly at 600 Hertz (frequency of wing beats, per second) one day but at perhaps 610 Hertz on another, when it\u2019s warmer. Data collection was the hard part. The company collected insects, brought them to the lab and recorded 100 million different interactions with the sensor, with lots of different insect species. <\/p>\n

There are more than one million acres of almond trees in California\u2019s Central Valley region and about 800,000 acres combined of pistachio trees and walnut trees potentially available to the moths. The total area of almond trees in the state is equal to the combined size of Dublin, Wicklow and Wexford. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is just a buffet for these guys. Their population, starting in July, can exponentially increase,\u201d says Dr Houston Wilson, an entomologist at the University of California, Riverside, who offers advice about this pest to growers. The sensor also acts as a mini-weather station and is recharged by attached solar panels. <\/p>\n

Almond grower Ryan Payne, in a testimonial on the company\u2019s website, said his leading pest of concern was the navel orangeworm which, if left untreated, could cause damage to up to 30 per cent of the crop. He said no farmer wanted to spray a pesticide over 100 per cent of a field, and that more targeted treatment with less volume was always attractive. <\/p>\n

The old-fashioned way of tracking this moth-nemesis of a multibillion-dollar industry is for growers to place an alluring scent in a sticky trap. <\/p>\n

\u201cGrowers can spend the day driving around looking at traps and taking notes,\u201d says Wilson. Female moths send out a special chemical compound (a pheromone) to help males find them, and farmers can flood their orchards with synthetic versions of this pheromone to disrupt moth mating \u2013 if they know when the time is right to do so. <\/p>\n

Keogh believes his sensor offers an answer. \u201cThis is an information problem \u2013 the information is, which insects are active, and in which part of your field,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\"HealthyHealthy almonds being compared to those attacked by the navel orangeworm moth. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe walking around looking at sticky traps is very, very time consuming and inaccurate. Now a grower can sit at his morning coffee and see on his phone that he has a problem in his north field.\u201d <\/p>\n

Moth alert <\/p>\n

If one farm fails to act, the problem can spill over to their neighbours, since the moths are strong flyers. Wilson wants to introduce a regional alert to advise growers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a pretty strong argument to manage this insect across an entire region, instead of a bunch of individuals managing it alone on their farm,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n

He plans to evaluate smart traps that relay real-time information to growers. The FarmSense sensor stands out, he adds: \u201cIt is a unique trap because it looks at wing beats \u2013 all the other ones are using a camera to take a photo of a sticky trap.\u201d <\/p>\n

The issue is not just about moth damage. The caterpillars bore into the almonds and allow a fungus, Aspergillus, to gain entry. This fungus can create aflatoxins, cancer<\/a>-causing compounds that are heavily regulated in key export markets in Asia and Europe. Growers get payment bonuses or penalties depending on the level of damage to their harvest from the moth larvae. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s been further bad news for Californian tree nut farmers in recent years also. Heavy rains have made collecting nuts on the ground difficult, allowing more moths to overwinter on them. \u201cThe past two years we\u2019ve seen some of the heaviest crop damage on record for navel orangeworm,\u201d says Wilson. <\/p>\n

Keogh, meanwhile, hopes his new sensor, inspired by spyware, can give growers the information they need for more environmentally benign and efficient pest control. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dubliner Eamonn Keogh was inspired by tech straight out of a spy novel to set up a company…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[811,258,13355,61,60,82],"class_list":["post-305743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-california","tag-cancer","tag-food-production","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}