Fiscal Year:
2007
Title:
Breaking the Information Bottlenecks in Retail Plant Sales
Agency:
USDA
Contract:
2007-33610-17960
Award Amount:
$80,000.00
Abstract:
Development of an advanced, innovative system in support of timely assessments of emerging
market opportunities for U.S. commodity crops is proposed. GDA will prototype a set of
automated, decision support algorithms for near-real time, analytical assessment of large
volumes of satellite derived time-series data on crop conditions. For development, the project
will collaborate with the Production Estimates and Crop Assessment Division (PECAD) of the
USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS). The algorithms will allow PECAD to move from
mainly visual, qualitative assessment of time-series data to automated, quantitative processing of
the data within FAS operational settings and to greatly improve FAS marketing and trade
assessments. The project will utilize current near-real time and historical publicly available
NASA MODIS data from the Global Agriculture Monitoring Project (GLAM), a joint project
between NASA, USDA FAS, and the University of Maryland. These data will be used to
monitor crop conditions, compare given year conditions with those of the previous years, and to
forecast relative crop yield on a bi-monthly basis. The proposed approach will be validated on
the U.S.A. pilot sites against USDA NASS Agricultural Statistics and on international pilot sites
against agricultural statistics from FAS. The overall results of the project will enhance regional
and global agricultural monitoring and improve the timeliness and accuracy of current and
projected crop commodity information relative to temporal marketing opportunities. The
capabilities developed under this effort will enhance the ability of US agro-businesses to rapidly
respond to, and capitalize, on new market opportunities both nationally and globally.
Small Business Information at Submission:
Aerulean Plant Identification Systems, Incorporated
220 Chester Street Menlo Park, CA 94025
EIN/Tax ID:
201365931
DUNS:
N/A
Number of Employees:
N/A
Woman-Owned:
No
Minority-Owned:
No
HUBZone-Owned:
No