WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – A group of Purdue University researchers has led the Useful to Usable climate initiative in launching two free online tools to help farmers make crop decisions in variable weather conditions.
Useful to Usable, or U2U, aims to improve profitability and longevity of U.S. farms amid a variable and changing climate. The project, funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, is composed of a team of 50 faculty, staff and students from nine universities who specialize in applied climatology, crop modeling, agronomy, cyber technology, agricultural economics and other social sciences. Linda Prokopy, associate professor of forestry and natural resources at Purdue, leads the team.
One of the recently launched tools, “AgClimate View,” offers users access to historical climate and crop yield data for the Corn Belt, including monthly temperature and precipitation, and plots corn and soybean yield trends. It also allows users to compare climate and yield data from the past 30 years.
The second tool, “Corn Growing Degree Day,” gives producers the ability to track current and historical growing degree day accumulations. Growing degree days are a measure of heat accumulation that helps farmers predict plant development rates and maturity dates.
This tool also offers information to help farmers assess spring and fall frost risk and make planting, harvest and seed-selection decisions. It integrates corn development stages with weather and climate data and allows farmers to find location-specific information.
For More Information: http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2014/Q1/purdue-researchers-launch-two-new-farm-decision-tools.html
Website: http://www.agclimate4u.org.
