Documentation

Definitions

Rice Development Advisory: An interactive web-based program that predicts rice growth stages and provides advice on rice management. The program allows the user to select advanced options for creating, running, and displaying multiple field crop forecasts for different rice varieties, planting dates, and rice producing counties in Texas.

10% emergence : Date on which 10% of the seedlings have emerged in a rice field.

90% emergence : Date on which 90% of the seedlings have emerged in a rice field.

Field Profile:   A collection of production and weather data needed to forecast rice plant growth stages.  Production data include rice variety, planting date, 10% emergence date, and 90% emergence date.  Weather data include weather station, and year or historic average for the station.

Guest User: A guest user can use the Rice Development Advisory.  However, the user will not be able to use some of the advanced features nor save data to the system database.

Registered User: A registered user (by creating a new account) can use all the features of the Rice Development Advisory. Registered users can create and edit their profiles and add their own weather data.

Weather Data Information

Weather Data Source:  The Rice Development Advisory has direct access to a large weather database with over 1000 weather stations for Texas, with both current and historic data, dating back to 1800’s for some stations.  The weather data were obtained from The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).   The Rice Development Advisory currently provides access to weather stations for the following 21 rice producing counties in Texas:

Austin	Galveston	Liberty
Bowie	Hardin	Matagorda
Brazoria	Harris	Orange
Calhoun	Hopkins	Red River
Chambers	Jackson	Victoria
Colorado	Jefferson	Waller
Fort Bend	Lavaca	Wharton

The NOAA weather data is usually for 1-2 months when it is available to us.  Currently, only the Beaumont Research & Extension Center (Jefferson County) and the Eagle Lake Research Station (Colorado County) have up-to-date weather data.

 Registered users can add their own weather data for use by the Rice Development Advisory.  The user-supplied weather data is accessible only by the specific user. No other user can access it.

Weather Data Usage : The weather data (daily maximum and minimum air temperatures) is used by the program to estimate dates of different crop stages based on heat requirements, starting from the date of 10% emergence.  A user can choose weather data for the current year, a historic year, or daily historic averages for a particular weather station.  For the current year, the Rice Development Advisory uses current weather data for the selected weather station, and uses the station’s daily historic average for the remaining days of the current year. If the selected weather station does not have up-to-date weather data, the program automatically uses up-to-date weather data from either Eagle Lake Research Station (for counties west of Houston) or Beaumont Center (for counties east of Houston).

For a county without a weather station, the program provides three stations from the counties which are closest to the county.

Since the program currently does not provide daily historic average for a user’s weather station, users can choose the daily historic average from an available weather station in the same county as the user’s weather station.

Weather Data Access: The Rice Development Advisory provides an interface for users to view and download weather data (both historic and current) for weather stations in all of the 21 rice producing counties in Texas.  Registered users can also view and edit their own weather data.

Menu Definitions

Account Info:  Display information about a user (user name, user ID, email, etc.) who has registered with the Rice Development Advisory program. User information is only accessible by that user.

Variety Info: Display information about all varieties which are currently in the system.  The information includes heat units to different crop stages (2^nd tiller, panicle differentiation, first heading, milk stage, turning, and grain maturity) and disease resistance (rice blast, sheath blight, and straight head).

CYPRESS	COCODRIE
FRANCIS	JEFFERSON
WELLS	DIXIEBELLE
GULFMONT	XL8
CL161	SABER
CHENIERE	XL7
BENGAL