Hyperlocal weather and soil data from ClearAg will support research into sustainable crop performance, it has been announced.

Iteris Inc., the global leader in applied informatics for transportation and agriculture, has announced that CONSUS, a research partnership between University College Dublin (UCD) and Origin Enterprises plc (Origin), will add Iteris ClearAg® environmental intelligence to its crop modeling platform.

Under the terms of the agreement, ClearAg will provide location-specific environmental intelligence to CONSUS, a five-year research programme supported by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI).

Creation of crop models

CONSUS researchers will seek to use ClearAg’s environmental intelligence to contribute to the creation of crop models to optimise sustainable crop performance for agronomists and growers in the UK and globally.

“We are excited to work with Iteris to explore the harnessing of ClearAg’s environmental intelligence into the CONSUS research and development platform to provide comprehensive, farm-specific weather data for our agriscience researchers,” said Professor Gregory O’Hare, UCD School of Computer Science and lead principal investigator at CONSUS.

Optimise sustainable crop performance

He added: “ClearAg’s location-specific current and historical weather data, as well as its climatology and soil conditions information, will enable CONSUS to develop scalable, dynamic and integrated crop models to optimise sustainable crop performance.”

“We are thrilled that CONSUS has selected ClearAg’s environmental intelligence to power its crop modeling platform,” said Pierre-André Rebeyrat, vice-president and general manager, agriculture and weather analytics at Iteris.

“Strategic partnerships between academia and industry, like UCD and Origin’s CONSUS program, are vital in the pursuit of global crop sustainability. We are proud that ClearAg’s environmental intelligence will support the program’s research and ultimately help further the understanding of the interactions between field environmental conditions and sustainable crop production.”