Webinar – Combining crop and disease modeling with numerical weather forecasting to inform wheat blast early warning systems in Bangladesh, Brazil, and beyond
CGIAR Webinar by the Platform for Big Data in Agriculture’s Community of Practice on Crop Modeling – Combining crop and disease modeling with numerical weather forecasting to inform wheat blast early warning systems in Bangladesh, Brazil, and beyond
Wheat blast is a fast-acting and devastating fungal disease that threatens food safety and security in the Americas and South Asia. First officially identified in Brazil in 1984, the disease is widespread in South American wheat fields, affecting as much as 3 million hectares in the early 1990s. In 2016, it crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and Bangladesh suffered a severe outbreak. Crop losses in Bangladesh were assessed to be around 25 to 30 percent, threatening progress in the region’s food security efforts. Estimates are that blast could reduce wheat production by up to 85 million tons in Bangladesh, equivalent to $13 million in foregone farmers’ profits each year when outbreak occurs. This webinar provides background and detail on efforts by researchers associated with the CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture’s Community of Practice on Crop Modeling to develop a numerical weather forecasting model driven early warning system for wheat blast outbreak. The webinar also explains how this system is being coupled with the Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT) model to better predict the phenological stages when wheat is most susceptible to blast, and preliminary efforts to model potential disease-inflicted yield reduction risks in both Bangladesh and Brazil.
Presenters
Timothy J. Krupnik
Timothy J. KrupnikSenior Scientist and Systems Agronomist at the International Wheat and Maize Improvement Center
Jose Mauricio Fernandes
Crop Pathologist at the University of Passo Fundo, Brazil
January 10, 2020
Really an excellent initiative for the agriculture sector👌