Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

Growing degree days (GDDs) are used to estimate the growth and development of plants and insects during the growing season. Growing Degree Day are computed by subtracting a base value temperature from the mean daily temperature and are assigned a value of zero if negative. Base temperatures are a...

Mean Temperature Difference From Normal values are computed by subtracting the normal monthly average temperature from the average monthly temperature of the month. The average monthly temperature is computed by obtaining the mean value of average daily temperatures for a month. If the month was...

The Crop Stress Index is the ratio of actual evapotranspiration (AET) to potential evapotranspiration (PET) express as: CSI = 1-(AET/PET) AET and PET are calculated within the Versatile Soil Moisture Budget (VSMB) model using temperature and precipitation data and a crop-specific...

The Versatile Soil Moisture Budget (VSMB) is a soil water budget model that is continuous and deterministic in nature and was developed by AAFC. It is based on the premise that the water available for plant growth is gained by precipitation or irrigation, and lost through evapotranspiration and...

Crop development stage in a numerical scale. All living organisms move from one stage of development to the next over time. For annual crops, it life cycle (growing season) completed within a year. Crop water use differs from one stage to another mostly due to the differences in the amount of...

These products represent crop health indices derived from the Versatile Soil Moisture Budget (VSMB) model using crop specific coefficients and station based precipitation and temperature measurements to simulate crop growth. The VSMB model simulates soil moisture dynamics and water stress...