The free myrtle rust reporter app went live on the iPhone and Android app stores today. You can use it to quickly take photos of the trees in the Myrtaceae family in your neighbourhood that you care about the most.

Each time you pass, stop and have a look for yellow or orange powdery spots on the leaves. If you find them, don't touch. Photograph it with the app and call the biosecurity hotline immediately at 0800 80 99 66.

Myrtle rust is a major threat to native, production, and ornamental plants in the myrtle family. Everything from eucalypts to manuka to pohutukawa are a risk. Managing the pathogen requires a lot of up-to-date knowledge of where it is, where it isn't (yet), and how quickly it's spreading.

Please spread the word (and not the rust).

You can learn more about the app here and learn more about myrtle rust here.

It's been a busy first day after the launch of myrtle rust reporter. We have accumulated a number of observations with scattered contributions from both the North and South Islands.

Steve Pawson from the design team was interviewed by Jesse Mulligan on RadioNZ and we are slowly building our profiles elsewhere, e.g., Project Crimson, Facebook etc. We hope to have more high profile media coverage as the days progress.

Unfortunately we were a little too successful on day one with a new report of myrtle rust from Taranaki. Despite our obvious desire to not want to be find new infestations, it was great to see the app facilitating a speedy and efficient response. Great coordination/communications between the NatureWatchNZ user and MPIs biosecurity response and diagnostic staff. Well done team!

Thanks you all for your great support of the project. If you have time over the next few days please hand hold a few friends to get them going on the app. We still have huge ground to cover and the more people that join in the more effective we will be.

Cheerio

Steve
MRR Design Team

Another good day of observations came to an end, thankfully with no more positive finds. More participants have registered but we still have big gaps on our map so please do introduce the app to your friends and colleagues.

It's summer, whoo hoo! The country is basking in warm weather. Yesterday I was in Tauranga and it was clearly a hot sticky day, perfect conditions for fungi to thrive. Hence it is important that we are more vigilant than ever.

We had a couple of suspected cases of myrtle rust yesterday, thankfully both were false alarms. A huge thanks to those that took the time to report them you definitely did the right thing. I encourage everyone to report suspect finds as it is better to let experts conclusively rule them out than potentially miss something.

Again a huge thanks to all those that are helping with the IDs of potential host plants we really appreciate your assistance. Hope everyone has a great weekend and please do encourage your friends and family to participate and give them a helping hand to get started.

Steve