1. What are other cover crop tools (e.g. competition to CCDSS) that are available to farmers and farm advisors?
2. Why farmers and farm advisors will choose CCDSS over other available cover crop tools?
The tool is simple and innovative that gives several options for farmers and farm advisors with minimum input from users. Since, the outcome of cover cropping depends on a range of genetic, environmental, and management (GxExM) factors that include cropping system, cover crop species, intended benefits, soil type, and climate. Thus, adoption should be guided by knowledge and information tailored to regional and local conditions, which is widely covered here.
3. What is the current stage of development of the CCDSS’ current stage of development and how close it is to commercialization?
CCDSS is generally aimed at improving cover crop decision making with the aid of crop simulation modeling. During the past 2 years, several achievements have been made including creating a crop model input database of soil, climate and crop management that is being used for calibration/validation. Calibrating/validating DSSAT CERES-Maize model for maize hybrid and CRES-Wheat model for cereal rye variety and incorporated them into DSSAT database. We have developed the beta version of the CCDSS and would like to get feedback from producers and commercialize after a few fine tunings.
4. What additional steps are required to move CCDSS closer to commercialization?
Several key deliverables have been achieved during the first two phases of the project, we’re also working to improve the depth and robustness of the tool and commercialize on a pilot scale. For the past two years, the study has been limited to eastern Nebraska (excluding crop model calibration/validation) given the time/resources required to collect a diverse set of datasets. We want to expand crop model input database (soil, climate (from weather stations), and crop management) to be able to calibrate/validate DSSAT for more crop varieties/species while this tool is operational.
The development of the beta version of CCDSS involved several experts from different disciplines and had been a great learning experience. In the process, the team has acquired useful skills that will come in handy for possible future refinements/improvements and commercialization. The tool will be very useful in its current form, there is also a room for improvement. Being the first version, several simplifications have been made in different components of the system to make it as easy as possible for average users.