The agro-climate application information system for crop production and protection in Egypt

Abstract

Agricultural activities are closely related to weather factors. The climate of a given region determinate the type of crops, management systems, and finally the cash return of the unit area of the land. The effect of climatic factors on agriculture and natural resource management is evident. Not only the macroclimate that affect agriculture, but also it is strongly affected by the microclimatic variation. Climatic factors affect the crop water requirements, time of cultivation, length of crop stand in the field, tolerance to pests and diseases, economic viability of agricultural production, and finally the total yield and product quality. The start point of any agricultural development is to understand the prevailing climate. The measurement of climatic data as well as the quality control of such data is the corner stone of the utilization processes. It is a costly operation and involves the utilization of a state of the art technology. Taking the case of Egypt, distribution uniformity of irrigation water and fertilizers, pests and diseases prediction, and planting dates are major problems under different climatic regions in Egypt. Uneven field surface, short furrows or small basin, losses by deep percolation, and fertilizer losses through soil profile characterize the old land. Such conditions affect water and fertilizer distribution efficiency. Early planting is one of the options for summer-cultivated crops in order to get the maximum economical yield at harvesting. Early prediction for diseases and insects is important to help the farmers avoiding heavy spray of pesticides and take necessary actions to avoid diseases. The use of climatic data could help in providing tools for proper management. The Central Laboratory for Agricultural Climate (CLAC) was established in the Agricultural Research Center in Egypt to provide information on the accurate irrigation scheduling that reduces the cost of irrigation and minimizes problems related to the misuse of water. Early pest and disease forecast and warnings allow suitable time for taking necessary actions to avoid chemical spray. Proper calculation of sowing dates ensures uniform plantation and reduces the cost of sowing seeds in several crops. The above mentioned agricultural management practices require real time weather data system covering the country. The system covers more than 33 agrometeorological stations. The data is collected automatically or manually, stored on a database, and utilized by several models and knowledge based systems. The dissemination of information occurs through different mass media facilities as well as a web page. Agricultural decision support system with mathematical and logical models is linked with a Geographical Information System (GIS) to provide tools for planning the land utilization and resource management options.