PRIDE Seeds Weather Central.ca

Posted on May 14, 2012

• PRIDE Seeds, WIN and Bayer CropScience Launch Enhanced WeatherCentral.ca: Better Tools. Better Grain.

  
  

  Chatham, ON (5/14/2012) – With the 2012 planting season well underway in Ontario, farmers sowing corn and soybeans this year now have free access to a new online tool kit available at WeatherCentral.ca. Weather INnovations has teamed with PRIDE Seeds and Bayer CropScience to deliver the latest in weather-based online agronomic advisories for Ontario’s major field crops, corn wheat and soybeans.

  WeatherCentral.ca provides site-specific tracking of Crop Heat Units and Growing Degree Days throughout the season. Growers can log-on to WeatherCentral.ca by creating a free profile. They can then identify and save field locations to view weather forecasts, agronomic models for wheat and corn, and interactive CHU and GDD reports for their exact locations.

  To coincide with the start of the 2012 season, WeatherCentral.ca has been revamped with a brand new look, and now features corn tools including models for predicting growth stages for the entire season and calculating drydown moisture levels at harvest.

  “These new advisory tools for growers will help them make better decisions on their farms,” said Ian Nichols, WIN president and business manager. “They assist in the more efficient use of resources while also reducing management stress.”

  The new Research Corner section will follow the very latest in grain research & development news from academic, government and industry investigators.

  “PRIDE Seeds is very enthusiastic to be part of the WeatherCentral.ca program,” said Stephen Denys, vice-president of sales and marketing. “Our goal as a company is to partner with like minded companies that are focused on providing farmers with the tools they need to increase profitability on the farm.  By sponsoring these tools, our goal is to ensure Canadian farmers have the environmental information they need to make more informed management decisions.  As a result, WeatherCentral.ca is an important resource for not only farmers, but for our dealers and agronomy team as well.”

  Of special interest at this point in the season is the SPRAYcast® model, available to all visitors to the site, with no registration required. It provides a three-day advisory of the best times to apply crop protection products based on weather forecasts.  SPRAYcast®, along with the DONcast^® and WHEATcast™ disease models, have been provided on WeatherCentral.ca for the past 3 years with support from Bayer CropScience.

  “The information and tools available through the site are essential to grain growers across Ontario,” said Greig Zamecnik, Director of Business - Row Crops & Horticulture with Bayer CropScience. “We are proud to continue supporting our customers with this kind of open-access, science-based outreach.”

  WeatherCentral.ca is also now on Twitter! Follow us through “_weathercentral” to stay current on critical weather news, site updates, photographs and observations from fields. More upgrades are scheduled throughout the season, so stayed tuned at http://www.weathercentral.ca.

  PRIDE Seeds – www.prideseed.com
  PRIDE Seeds is part of AgReliant Genetics which features one of the largest corn breeding and testing programs in North America.  Based in Pain Court, Ontario, PRIDE Seeds is performing everywhere you go through a full range of corn, soybean and forage varieties designed to meet the needs of producers across Canada. PRIDE is a registered trademark of Limagrain Genetics Inc.  Used under licence.  P and design are registered trademarks of AgReliant Genetics. 

  Pat Wakely, Canadian Marketing Manger – Office:  519-354-3210 ext. 221
  pwakely@prideseed.com

  Weather INnovations Incorporated (WIN)
  WIN specializes in providing turnkey weather based monitoring and modelling solutions for agribusinesses, producer organizations, government agencies, researchers and others. WIN makes models easy to use at the farm level by providing a connection to innovative research with site-specific applications.

  Bayer CropScience
  Bayer is a global enterprise with core competencies in the fields of health care, nutrition and high-tech materials. Bayer CropScience AG, a subsidiary of Bayer AG with annual sales of about EUR 7,255 million in 2011, is one of the world’s leading innovative crop science companies in the areas of crop protection, non-agricultural pest control, seeds and plant biotechnology. The company offers an outstanding range of products and extensive service backup for modern, sustainable agriculture and for non-agricultural applications. Bayer Crop-Science has a global workforce of about 21,000 and is represented in more than 120 countries.