What is it?

• an innovative internet service that helps rural landholders and contractors to better plan and match the timing of chemical applications to prevailing local weather conditions;
• supported by Nufarm for the exclusive use of its Australian customers;
• represents a significant addition to the suite of products from which Nufarm’s Top Cropper program participants can purchase by redeeming loyalty points or remitting a discounted annual fee which reflects the large number of users;
• developed and continues to be maintained under contract by Agricultural Reconnaissance Technologies Pty Ltd (trading as Agrecon)

What can it do for me?

• predicts the weather on your farm up to 14 days in advance;
• provides 3 hourly forward estimates of rainfall, temperature, wind direction, wind speed and relative humidity for the next 7 days and 12 hourly forward estimates for the following 7 days;
• combines these weather parameters to derive Delta T values in the manner depicted in the following diagram as a guide to the relative suitability of prevailing conditions for spraying;
• features a screen layout giving easy control of functionality and uncluttered viewing;
• presents weather parameters as a series of graphical Meteograms;
• provides spray condition suitability assessments in the form of a user-friendly Spray Planner showing 3 hourly blocks for the next 5 days in red, orange or green traffic light colours;
• incorporates animated maps showing where and how much rainfall is likely to occur across Australia over the next 7 days
• includes weather radar maps from the nearest radar station operated by the Bureau of Meteorology and national synoptic charts for the last 24 hours

Why is it unique?

Spraywise Decisions is the only service of its kind that:

• uses advanced spatial interpolation techniques to generate weather parameter estimates for the nearest 1 km2 grid cell anywhere across Australia. It provides a virtual weather station and forecast for each of your fields;
• embodies a short 3 hour time step or extends out to 14 days;
• provides users with timeframe options of 2 days, 5 days, 7 days and 14 days;
• incorporates securitized auto-registration, geography select and point edit functionality, multi-date satellite image display, user selectable map theme overlays, real-time map co-ordinate and scale display, unrestricted nation-wide zoom, pan, feature identification and point selection functionality

How accurate and reliable is it?

Spraywise Decisions:

• employs industry standard forecasting models used by global weather agency leaders to generate weather parameter forecasts;
• incorporates a "grey zone" within each meteogram whose width increases to signify that accuracy and reliability declines in proportion to the length of the prediction time-frame;
• predictions are most reliable for conservative weather parameters such as temperature and relative humidity, moderately reliable for rainfall and Delta T and least reliable for wind direction and speed because regional wind flows are distorted by local topography;
• wind direction and speed applies to the average over a given three hour period. The speed of instantaneous gusts can be up to or even more than three times average wind run speed and vary from prevailing wind directions by up to 180 degrees.
• comparisons of predicted versus actual weather conditions confirms that temperatures, relative humidity, rainfall and Delta T are reliable for operational spray related decisions out to 7 days in most locations

What other information services can I access?

Spraywise Decisions:

• represents the first of a series of information services that Nufarm plans to sponsor for its customers;
• accesses climatic data, satellite imagery and map themes comprising Agrecon’s larger KnowledgeGrid^TM data warehouse. It draws on the architecture and functionality of the AgreView^TM information system and has been developed as a discrete but stand alone module within AgreView^TM;
• further details regarding other information systems functionality can be obtained from www.agrecon.com.au