Agricultural data helping develop tools for crop disease management

The North Dakota Agricultural Weather Network (NDAWN) plays a vital role in developing tools for crop disease management. Established in 1989 with funding from the High Plains Climate Center, NDAWN began with six automatic weather stations and has since expanded to 250 stations across North Dakota, Minnesota, and northeastern Montana. These stations provide high-resolution, localized, real-time weather data tailored for agriculture.

NDAWN's success was validated by models like the Late Blight Modeling and Cercospora forecasting for sugarbeets. Daryl Ritchison, NDAWN's director and state climatologist, highlights that the network supplies high-resolution, localized data that enables researchers to develop forecasting models.

Wise Roads, a project by the Western Dakota Energy Association, improved transportation efficiency in the oil and gas industry by deploying 50 research-grade weather stations in western North Dakota. The stations measure temperature, wind speed, humidity, soil temperatures, and moisture.

Ritchison emphasizes that NDAWN's data is crucial for research on plant disease and pest management, providing high-resolution, research-grade weather data that supports forecasting models. For instance, NDAWN's white mold disease forecaster, NDAWN White Mold Risk Maps, predicts white mold risk in soybeans, helping farmers reduce yield losses and optimize fungicide use.

Ritchison also mentions the real-time inversion alert system, the only one of its kind in the United States, which detects low-level air temperature inversions to prevent spray particles from drifting off-target. Ritchison sees significant potential for NDAWN's impact in the future, with the network enabling the development of more tools to aid agricultural decision-making.