The SRAT project’s third workshop, held in La Fe, Ilama (Honduras), marked a key step forward: adapting an expert system that will act as the “brain” of the Regional Early Warning System for Coffee Rust. This component analyses and links the data entering the system, based on rules and mathematical models, to produce risk forecasts and recommendations that make it possible to anticipate a rust crisis. During the meeting, different expert systems and coffee warning models were evaluated, such as the one presented from Mexico.

Through group exercises, the specialists reached consensus on how management, shade, climate, and social and economic factors, and their interactions, affect the development of the disease. Overcoming differences of opinion among experts was one of the project’s major achievements, because that information underpins modelling and forecasting. According to the 2018 poster, 25 regional experts and 30 technicians from the partner coffee institutions took part.

📄 Project poster 2018 (PDF, in Spanish)
📄 Final technical report (PDF, in Spanish)
🔗 Project page (in Spanish)