An innovative new mobile phone app that will help growers identify weeds on their farms will be launched by BASF at the beginning of next month.

Demonstrating a development version at Tillage-Live, Sarah Mountford-Smith, cereal herbicide manager for BASF, said the app contained 140 arable grass and broad-leaved weeds and over 1,000 photos to aid identification.

Users of the app can take a picture of the weed they are trying to identify, which remains as a smaller image on screen while users filter weeds out by choosing characteristics relating to the weed, such as cotyledon and leaf shape. Line drawings of the key features of different grass weeds

Once the selection has been narrowed, growers can swipe through a slide show of similar weeds to find the correct one, Mrs Mountford-Smith said. “Each weed comes with additional information and also, where appropriate, some information on similar weeds that it could be mistaken for.”

Users can also search for weeds based on common name, Latin name or via a free text search.

An additional neat feature is the ability to map weeds to a Google map assigning a name, date and radius of the weed patch to the pin. “That could be useful in recording weed patches year-on-year.”

A third feature will allow users to submit photos of cranesbill to ADAS, which has helped develop the app, for formal identification. “Identification of the correct species can be important for product choice,” Mrs Mountford-Smith said. “The plan is to have a map on our website which will show where different species of cranesbill are being found.”

The app will cost £2.99 and will initially be available for the Apple iPhone, with Android and Blackberry versions to follow by the end of the year.