Weather Variability and Its Impact on Field Crops: Continuing the Field Crops Webinar Series

Feb 20, 2025

By Angie Gradiz

Weather variability is a critical factor in the success of field crops, influencing plant growth, yield potential and the timing of essential agronomic activities. Variations in temperature, precipitation and seasonal patterns can create both challenges and opportunities for producers. Understanding and managing these variations is key for optimizing crop production. By closely monitoring weather trends and implementing proactive strategies, field crop producers can better anticipate risks, make informed decisions and adapt to climate uncertainties, ultimately increasing farm profitability.

The Field Crops Webinar Series, offered by Michigan State University Extension, consists of eight informative online sessions focused on field crop production and pest management. This series is designed for field crop producers, consultants and agribusiness professionals seeking to expand their knowledge.

The theme for this year's series is once again, Two for the Price of One: Conversations in Row Crop Agriculture. Each session will feature two speakers giving short presentations and discussing different aspects of the topic in an informal talk-show/podcast format with plenty of opportunity for interaction with the audience. Participants will hear how to enhance their row crop production systems in the coming season and have an opportunity to ask questions of agricultural experts.

The live webinars will run on Monday evenings from 7 to 8 p.m. beginning Feb. 3 and ending March 24, 2025.

The cost of registration is $20 per person for the entire series. This year, we have been approved for seven restricted use pesticide (RUP) applicator credits throughout the course of the program and 8 certified crop adviser (CCA) continuing education units (CEU). Those who attend the live webinars will be eligible to receive one CCA CEU per week and one RUP credit per week, with the exception of March 17. Those requesting RUP credits will receive them in Private Core (if private applicator) or choose between Commercial Core or category 1A (field crops) if they are a commercial applicator.

Webinars will be recorded and archived so participants may choose to view the recordings at a later date. Credits are available only for participants in the live sessions.

Each Monday, registrants will receive an email reminding them of the webinar coming up that evening with the link to the webinar and any other pertinent reminders. The webinars may be accessed on a mobile device or a computer with a stable internet connection—no other equipment is necessary. Archived recordings from previous seasons are accessible for free at the MSU Extension Field Crops Webinar Series webpage.

Source : msu.edu

Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.