Company Partners with NCSU Extension Service
After four years of data management in the potato industry, Medius Ag is excited to announce that we have added wheat to our Medius.Re portfolio. This represents an important step in the expansion of our data management offerings and we believe it illustrates the value of the .Re platform across agriculture in general. According to USDA estimates by the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), in 2019 wheat was the fourth largest crop in the United States by value at about $8.9 billion. Over 45 million acres of wheat are planted each year and nearly 40 million acres of wheat are harvested annually. More than 40 states report wheat acreage, giving it one the largest production footprints in the country.
Earlier this month, the transition of commercial wheat trial data generated through the North Carolina Official Variety Trial (NCOVT) Program to the .Re platform was completed. Currently there are 1,723 variety records for 196 wheat varieties across 30 trials in North Carolina dating back to 2014 available at https://ncovt.medius.re/trials/wheat/commercial. Additional data for experimental lines will become available at a future date yet to be determined. As with all .Re platforms, users will be able to compare emerging varieties with industry standards across locations and years with ease. In this way, growers, extension agents, researchers, and other interested parties will be able to evaluate North Carolina wheat data quickly, accurately, and efficiently. Ultimately this information will lead to improved planting decisions by North Carolina wheat growers. In 2019, 225,000 acres of wheat was harvested in North Carolina at a value of nearly $67 million.
The NCOVT Program is operated by the North Carolina State University Extension Service and also conducts variety trials for corn, soybeans, sorghum, and other small grains in addition to wheat. North Carolina farmers can evaluate the trial data to help inform their own variety planting decisions, thereby maximizing their production and competitiveness. A blog post by NCOVT program staff includes an informative video tutorial on how to use the platform.
If you have variety trial data that you’d like to see managed in a more dynamic way so that you too can stop sifting through spreadsheets, send us a note at info@mediusag.com.