New agroclimate app delivers real-time climate and crop insights

For years, farmers have had to rely on nothing more than experience and a watchful eye on the sky to make weather-based decisions.

Now, with just a few taps, they can access satellite-powered data that helps them decide when to water, fertilize, and harvest — all through a new app from researchers in Virginia Tech’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

The Agroclimate Viewer and Planner App (AgroVAP) is a free web tool that provides insights into crop health, weather forecasts, soil conditions, and climate patterns. Built on Google Earth Engine and powered by open-access geospatial databases, the app is intended to bridge the gap between agricultural research and practical, on-the-ground decision making.

“There is a tremendous amount of agricultural research happening, but very little of it is immediately useful to the end users — our farmers — mostly due to the lack of user-friendly and low-cost resources,” said Abhilash Chandel, assistant professor of precision agriculture technologies and data management in the Department of Biological Systems Engineering and lead developer of the app. “AgroVAP is designed to change that by offering a user-friendly, no-cost solution for growers.”

The Agroclimate Viewer and Planner app addresses several longstanding challenges in agriculture, including the limitations of traditional crop assessments and the high cost and complexity of existing decision-support tools. Users can draw field boundaries, select parameters, utilize satellite imagery and their vegetation index, and access 16 days of hourly forecasts to make informed decisions related to spraying, irrigation, fertilization, and harvest timing.

“This is more than just a tool – it’s a catalyst for the future of farming,” said Anthony Jones, a farmer from Dinwiddie County, Virginia, who has used the planner tool. “It unlocks smarter, more profitable, and more sustainable agriculture.

The app supports over 45 crop types and can be applied to open-field farming systems worldwide. It pulls data from trusted sources, such as Sentinel-2 satellites, NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive satellite, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s global forecast system, and the International Soil Reference and Information Centre’s SoilGrids. Data is updated frequently, with weather forecasts refreshed daily and satellite imagery updated every four days.

The tool contains a self-learning knowledge base, and the researchers produced a series of video tutorials to assist farmers in learning the app’s ins and outs. In addition, Chandel and his team are conducting demonstrations across Virginia and at several locations nationwide.

While the app currently operates independently, Chandel said future updates may include integration with on-farm equipment and drone data processing. The project has received funding support from Cotton Incorporated and the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s Open Data Framework.

“We plan to add data processing capabilities for drones and customizations for private data storage and management at the user level,” Chandel said. “We’re committed to evolving this platform with advances in AI [artificial intelligence] and climate modeling.”