Author Archives: jec3@cornell.edu

The Tools I Want, Where I Want

That’s just what you’ll get on the Dashboard we’re building for NEWA. “The Tools I Want, Where I Want” on the Home page’s center will invite you to login and create a profile for your NEWA Dashboard. Here’s a quick video about our project with an introduction to the Dashboard. What’s new with NEWA? https://youtu.be/sL2p4AgWe98

We’ve been busy — building a responsive NEWA website with improved weather data quality from the 729 weather stations that share data in 25 states for our crop and IPM tools. Our new platform will shrink down beautifully on your phone and expand out on your desktop to give you easy-to-access, accurate tools for IPM decision-making.

Place-based extension resources and logos will provide partner credit and give you the experience of being in your own university’s setting. Each weather station location will acknowledge those who provide data to NEWA, yes, all 729 of them, and as many more as decide to plug in to NEWA.

Screenshot picture of the NEWA Dashboard, sized for a phone.

The Favorite station info on my NEWA Dashboard, sized for a phone.

A Stakeholder Innovation Workshop identified areas of need and set the stage for prioritizing NEWA’s content. One-on-one user experience (UX) research informed NEWA’s design. Our project advisory panel — producers, faculty, Extension specialists, state partners, and weather station owners — contributed advice on UX, architecture, design, functionality, and ADA compliance to heighten your experience when interacting with the responsive NEWA decision support system.

NEWA’s improved data handling will boost speed and enhance capacity to build more tools. The National Digital Forecast gridded data are being integrated as a backup data source for weather stations that fail to report data. Inclusion of these data greatly improves the reliability and loading speed of the NEWA tools.

When you have a Dashboard, your trap catch dates, and and other stuff used by NEWA’s tools, will be saved for the weather station location. You won’t have to enter this over and over and over again.

Prefer open access? NEWA Home now serves weather data from the weather station closest to your location, automatically, with an interactive map of NEWA weather stations. Two landing pages, Weather Tools and Crop & IPM Tools, buoy simplified navigation.

NEWA’s models have been modernized via a common model template fostering tool development. Drive the tools with left or button menus: station selection, date of interest, toggle on/off tool elements. Tool elements are grouped in user input, management guide, results table, results graph, and environmental variables table. You can download tool data (CSV) and graphs ( PNG).

Beta testers unanimously praise design and navigation. We are now building out NEWA’s tools and anticipate finishing around May of 2021. NEWA version 3.0 will be launched in 2021 at newa.cornell.edu.

NEWA: Your source for weather and science-driven IPM tools.

Our Impact Statement: Increased use of digital IPM decision support systems like NEWA results in more growers making better pest management decisions with less pesticide input. NEWA’s renewed architecture now delivers geo-specific attribution for appropriate place-based extension outreach on devices as small as phones. Common building blocks used to reconstruct the 35 IPM models into responsive NEWA tools were delineated and pave the way for future growth and easy upgrades. A NEWA dashboard will display what the user wants from the locations they want: easy to set up through NEWA’s user profile. The profile backend will store essential biofix and crop information to drive fast and accurate IPM forecasts for growers. We have developed the required back-end databases and front-end design elements that will heighten positive user experiences when interacting with the responsive NEWA decision support system. To support NEWA data quality, we utilize forecast data and our weather station data editor tool to provision an accurate and reliable decision support system. Improved navigation comes via an interactive NEWA map and streamlined landing page designs that echo our user-experience research. When growers have access to reliable, weather-based, real time NEWA models, IPM practices increase on the farm, preventing plant disease, insect, and crop loss, reducing unnecessary inputs, and minimizing health, economic and environmental risks.

This post was contributed by Juliet Carroll, Fruit IPM Coordinator and past NEWA leader. Contact her at jec3@cornell.edu

Malusim app released!

We are pleased to announce the official release of the Malusim app, including an android and an iOS version. You can download the app from the Google Play Store or the iTunes Store, OR use the app from any browser at https://malusim.org (note that speech recognition features are not supported in the browser version of the app).

IMPORTANTIf you used the 2018 beta version of the Malusim app for Android:

Uninstall the 2018 beta version of the Malusim app for Android from your devices before downloading the new release from the Google Play Store. Why? Because the data storage method has changed, and any changes you make to your data in the old app will not be accessible via the new app on any of the supported platforms.

You can continue to access any data that you entered last year – however, remember that when entering data for this year, you should clone any existing locations, rather than editing them and simply updating the year. Cloning will allow you to access data from previous years in the future.

We welcome any feedback on the Malusim app. Send comments to Terence Robinson, tlr1@cornell.edu, Cornell University.

Apple Tools made Easier to Use

NEWA now (1) will save your apple biofix dates, (2) has a button to click out of apple biofix dates that are too early, and (3) provides the full interface for apple pest forecast tools accessed from the Station Pages. You may need to clear your browser’s cache to enable local storage and see these changes.

(1) Biofix and orchard characteristics
Tired of entering green tip dates, bloom dates, etc., over and over again? We’re now caching that! The apple diseases, apple carbohydrate thinning, and apple irrigation tools on NEWA will now save the green tip date, first blossom open date, orchard blight history selection, bloom date, petal fall date, trees per acre, and age of orchard, that you entered when last using the tool.

Here’s what’s saved after you enter it:
Apple Scab – green tip date (50% green tip on ‘McIntosh’ apple or closest equivalent)
Fire Blight – first blossom open date on variety of interest & orchard blight history selection for block of interest
Sooty Blotch/Flyspeck – 90% petal fall on variety of interest
Apple Carbohydrate Thinning – green tip date & bloom date on variety of interest
Apple Irrigation – green tip date, trees per acre, & age of orchard for variety of interest

The dates and orchard characteristics cached are specific to the weather station location and the year used. The information saved is what you last entered when using the tool for that weather station and year.

This information is saved locally in your browser’s cache. Local storage from your browser is not backed up, so if it is cleared (deleted), it will need to be reentered. Always keep a record of your biofix dates and orchard characteristics. We developed an Apple Biofix Record Sheet to help growers keep track of the apple disease and insect biofix information. Feel free to adapt this to benefit your operation and use of NEWA tools.

***You may need to clear your browser’s cache to enable local storage and see these changes. Remember, though, that clearing your browser’s cache will delete your saved biofix dates and you may not want to do that if NEWA is already saving them.***

(2) Biofix has not occurred yet
Is the NEWA-estimated biofix date too early and you want to eliminate it? Now you can! On the Apple Diseases tools for apple scab (green tip date), fire blight (first blossom open date) and sooty blotch/flyspeck (90% petal fall date) a “Click if <biofix> has not occurred” button returns you to the pre-biofix IPM information for that apple disease tool.

Screen shots of the new button that can be used if biofix has not yet occurred. (A) For apple scab green tip. (B) For fire blight. (C) For sooty blotch/flyspeck.

This is especially important for locations south of New York where apple phenology can be estimated incorrectly from the historical data collected at Cornell AgriTech at NYSAES, Geneva, NY. In particular, for fire blight, the pre-biofix IPM message contains fundamental information about scouting for oozing, overwintering fire blight cankers. For apple scab, the pre-biofix message informs you about the upcoming primary infection season.

***You may need to clear your browser’s cache to see these changes. Remember, though, that clearing your browser’s cache will delete your saved biofix dates and you may not want to do that if NEWA is already saving them.***

(3) Full interface access from Station Pages
Do you want to see what happened last year or change the biofix date on an apple disease or insect tool when accessing it from a Station Page? Now you can! Previously, the Station Page Pest Forecasts for apple diseases (apple scab, fire blight, sooty blotch/flyspeck) and insects (spotted tentiform leafminer, oriental fruit moth, codling moth, plum curculio, obliquebanded leafroller, apple maggot) provided current day results only.

Now, those links will take you to the current day results in the fully functional interface, including the map, results, and more info tabs. The left-hand part of that interface allows you to select dates in the past to look at what the tool predicted for last year or prior years. You also can select an alternate weather station location and see the map of weather stations. A link below the model results will return you to the Station Page for the weather station of interest.

Screen shot of the NEWA fire blight tool accessed from the Geneva Station Page. The full interface has the Map, Results, and More Info tabs and the left-hand selection tools to access different dates and locations. Return to the Station Page using the link at the bottom of the web page display.

***You may need to clear your browser’s cache to see these changes. Remember, though, that clearing your browser’s cache will delete your saved biofix dates and you may not want to do that if NEWA is already saving them.***

Most of these upgrades are operational on the NEWA server now. Finalizing the local cache to save the orchard characteristics for the apple carbohydrate thinning model and the apple irrigation model will be operational by Monday, April 2, 2018.

Juliet Carroll, Fruit IPM Coordinator, NYS IPM Program, wrote this article with input from Keith Eggleston, Regional Climatologist, Northeast Regional Climate Center, and Dan Olmstead, NEWA Coordinator, NYS IPM Program