As cornfields endure crop harm brought on by climate, corn producers can use geospatial and distant sensing applied sciences to get a extra correct measurement of the harm and estimate potential financial loss, based on a latest research printed in Frontiers in Agronomy.

The United States is the most important producer of corn on the planet, and Mississippi alone produced greater than 28 million tons of corn in 2021. As the Mississippi Delta is considered one of Mississippi’s main corn-growing areas, crop harm from pure disasters like flooding, hailstorms, and wind can pose main threats to manufacturing.

In the research, the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA), Agricultural Research Service (ARS) researchers from the Crop Production System Research Unit used a GPS-mounted yield monitoring system to evaluate inexperienced snap or “brittle snap” — a situation triggered when corn stalks break from wind harm — in cornfields positioned in Stoneville, Mississippi, after extreme winds affected the Delta area in May and June 2022.

“A corn producer may not be able to see the extent of wind damage just by driving along the edges of the corn field,” stated ARS Research Agronomist Ammar Bhandari. “A corn producer may mistakenly believe their fields did not suffer damage when in reality may have occurred deep inside the fields.”

Researchers collected the yield maps from a number of cornfields and analyzed them to evaluate yield loss on account of wind harm. Results indicated a median yield lack of roughly 26 kilos per acre per 1% of whole wind harm. The potential loss was estimated to range from roughly $76 per acre for areas with lower than 25% of wind harm to roughly $232 per acre for areas with greater than 75% of wind harm.

By getting correct GPS coordinates of the harm places and mixing them with yield monitor information to estimate yield loss by way of geospatial applied sciences, producers can have a extra dependable reference instrument for assessing site-specific wind harm over massive areas.

“The research results could help predict potential yield loss (approximately 26 pounds per acre per 1% of total wind damage) and economic loss to assist producers and other stakeholders in decision-making to prepare for changing weather patterns and unprecedented severe windstorms in the future,” stated Bhandari.

The Agricultural Research Service is the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s chief scientific in-house analysis company. Daily, ARS focuses on options to agricultural issues affecting America. Each greenback invested in U.S. agricultural analysis leads to $20 of financial affect.