New Tools to Manage Crop Stresses and Optimize Corn Yields On Each Acre.

In order to meet the future need for increasing per acre corn yield, along with more sustainable use of crop inputs like water and nitrogen fertilizer, growers will have to become more efficient at managing crop inputs while minimizing crop stresses.  This will require a more thorough understanding of genotype x environment x management interactions and exploiting these interactions to optimize productivity and sustainability on each acre in a given season. To accomplish this goal agronomists and crop advisors will need to provide growers with better real-time decision aid tools which utilize geospatial data bases containing genotypic and agronomic treatment performance information, environmental information (i.e., real-time and historical climatic data), and field or landscape information (i.e., soils and topography).  A geospatial orientation enables both a regional or within field evaluation of the information. New analytical engines will be required to help distill information into knowledge that growers can use to make real time decisions.  This presentation will provide an overview of the approaches that Pioneer is considering in developing these new decision aids.