New tools created to give farmers better advantage

The National National

The National Weather Service is working with other agencies to customise a tool to maximise advantage in agriculture, weather officials say.
“A decision support system tool for agriculture with other tools are being developed by NWS and regional integrated multi-hazard early-warning system (Rimes) in consultation with respective key agencies and government sectors to be used in PNG,” said Jimmy Gomoga, the assistant director for the weather forecasting and warning centre.
He said an expert system for agro-meteorological early warning (Sesame) was developed by Rimes for farmers in Myanmar. Last month the decision support system tool was successfully customised.
“It is a web portal for generating and disseminating crop management advisories for specific crops at particular growth stages, based on weather and climate information at four different time scales:

  • Three-day high-resolution weather forecast for daily decision-making;
  • 10-day weather forecast (separated into two pentads or five days each), for planning a week ahead of activities;
  • monthly outlook, for planning activities that require longer lead time; and,
  • three-monthly outlook for general planning ahead of the season.

Gomoga said the Sesame maps crop sensitivity to a particular weather condition, processes how the predicted weather should influence crop growth and generate crop advisories using machine-learning algorithm.