Volunteer your garden to support insect research
Do you live in the Darwin or Palmerston area and have space to care for a tomato plant? We need your help!
Our Plant Biosecurity team are carrying out research on tomato potato psyllid (TPP) and we are searching for 100 volunteer citizen scientists to set up insect traps in their gardens or on their balconies. We will provide everything you need, including a free tomato plant.
How it works
From 31 May, you’ll need to collect your free tomato plant and ‘adopt a trap’ kit from Berrimah Farm (if you can’t pick it up, we’ll organise delivery). The kit will include sticky insect traps, pre-paid envelopes and instructions to help you set up the trap in your tomato plant at home.
The program will run for 4 weeks from Sunday 5 June. At the end of each trapping week, you will need to fill in a submission form, put the form and the used trap in the self-addressed envelope and put it in a post box.
Our team of entomologists at Berrimah Farm will then get to work identifying any insects stuck to the traps.
If you have the space, you can adopt more than one trap. We’ll supply you with more tomato plants.
There will be 2 trapping periods in 2022, in June and September.
