AgYields - a national database for collation of past, present and future pasture and crop yield data

Abstract

The New Zealand agricultural sector has a rich heritage of measuring yield and growth rates for pastures and crops. Historically these datasets were collected by Government departments, Crown research institutes, Universities and more latterly seed companies and private research providers as well as on-farm. These data are expensive to collect, spatially and temporally patchy, and stored in a range of electronic and physical platforms. Meanwhile the potential value of such data is increasing with the ability to create meta-analyses and simulation modelling to create resilience in crop and pasture systems to meet the needs of the changing regulatory and climate environment. A challenge of data collection is the different priorities and skill sets of those undertaking the task. Thus, there is a need to provide guidelines for the collection, collation and publication of such data to standardize best practice and maximize the value gained from increasingly scarce resources available for pasture and crop research to support the primary industries. In addition, declining funding for field research, means there is an urgent need to draw together existing and future data into a publicly accessible industry good resource. This paper outlines the development of the AgYields web-based repository for pasture and crop growth rate and yield data. It describes the rationale for the database and the need for standardization of data collection to maximize the value of stored data in common formats. The intent is to provide a resource to enhance livestock and crop production systems throughout New Zealand and provide guidelines for future data collection.

What are the best pasture improvement options for different South Island hill and high-country environments?

“…This would be relatively easy to assess with cage cuts taken on adjacent sites to generate on-farm pasture production data from improved pastures that can then be used to assess gross margins. Such onfarm monitoring could then be entered into a central AgYields database (https://www.agyields.co.nz; Moot et al, 2021) to provide localised information to farmers to increase their confidence when undertaking legume establishment, even in regions with highly variable rainfall patterns and soil types.…”

Hill Country Futures - Resilient farmers and resilient forages for the future

“…Data on the growth profiles of a range of forages (e.g red, white, and subterranean clover, lucerne, plantain, chicory) were collected from 13 research and commercial farms across New Zealand, including monocultures, mixtures and resident pastures. Data gained from these trials plus historic data sets were used to inform the development of the models described below and contributed to the AgYields national forage database (Moot et al 2022a). AgYields was developed to provide farmers and rural professionals with ready access to localised yield data that can be used to inform decisions around pasture planning.…”

“…The creation of AgYields has also led to the recovery of paper-based datasets that were in danger of being lost forever (Moot et al 2022a). The AgYields national forage database is an open access central repository, for all past, present, and future pasture and crop yield and growth rate data collected in New Zealand.…”