Building priorities for mid summer revisions of enviroweather for fruit crops

Suggestions from Amy Irish-Brown
MSU Extension Educator, Tree Fruit Pest Management


Short Term
· One column layout for fireblight – 40 hours
This is somewhat like the fireblight model in the old scud system where you can enter a biofix and track several infection periods and their projected symptom appearance date. This will be easier to do “what if” scenarios in this form
Amy: I’m not sure how useful this is – I think growers are only interested in when the infections or high risk for infections are predicted, so they can cover up, but I guess they would like to know what date they can stop worrying about FB showing up.

· Predicted harvest dates based on green tip dates – 40 hours (Phil’s maturity model)
We don’t need this until a month after bloom.
Amy: This is important to get done sometime, but clientele won’t be looking for it until July or August.

· Add regional rainfall to regional wetting report – 20 hours
Amy: I think this would be very useful – growers want to know how much rainfall there was to know if they’re still covered or not.

· GDD list of phenologies/activities – 60 hours
This will show what significant tree fruit insect pest stages are predicted to be happening based on the current degree days.
Amy: What a great idea – if we can agree on what stages occur at what DD’s

· Changing dates for start of models – 20 hours
Don’t show cherry leaf spot and grape black rot models early in the season when not needed
Amy: This is a little annoying, but not a big deal to me.

· Hourly integrator for apple scab – 20 hours
Intended to fix situations like this spring when dropping air temperatures can miss an infection period if the whole wetting period is used for the Mills table.
Amy: I rank this as my number one priority to see done.

· Show hourly data associated with a wetting period – 20 hours
Bob’s idea that it would be nice to be able to see the hourly data in order to check scab model performance.
Amy: I don’t think growers would be as interested in hourly info as we educators are – we have to remember who our primary audience it.

Long Term
· Cougarblight--Add biofix feature
Amy: I have no experience with Cougarblight, so have no real pressing need to see this done until perhaps next season.

· Sooty blotch and fly speck
Not needed until about July.
Amy: Since we have to capability to create this model easy enough, it should be done, but it’s not the biggest concern growers have, so it could be on a list for next season.

From Nikki:

Another thing for Enviroweather.... I talked with Rufus today, and we remembered Annemeik putting together some slides that talk about powdery mildew infection in grape... that you have so many infection periods before you will start to see symptoms. She is not in the country right now, but I think it would be good to add that feature to the list for fruit on Enviroweather. I can't give you more information right now--hopefully Annemiek will be in email contact. Do you know anything about this 'model'?