Purdue digital ag startup focused on yield forecasting, improved nutrient management

Software tools that predict the acreage and yield of the U.S. corn crop at county, regional and multistate scales and optimize in-season fertilizer nitrogen rates at the subfield scale have been developed by two Purdue University agriculture experts.

J&H Consulting of West Lafayette LLC was co-founded by Brad C. Joern, professor, and Philip J. Hess, applications analyst programmer, both in the Purdue University College of Agriculture's Department of Agronomy.

"We have developed a tool that uses digital data sources like soil and landscape properties, weather, cropping patterns and yield history to predict the size of the U.S. corn crop from sub-county to multistate scales on a daily basis," Joern said. "By providing more localized data, we can use a similar tool to predict the optimum in-season fertilizer nitrogen rate for corn at scales smaller than 1/10th of an acre."

"We also have programmed state-specific phosphorus risk-assessment tools and land grant university extension fertilizer recommendation algorithms for the major agronomic crops in 45 states," Hess said.

J&H Consulting has developed the following software libraries, or calculation engines, that are available to license:

* Regional Crop Yield Estimation System

* Soil nitrogen transformation and loss model

* State-specific phosphorus risk assessment tools

* Land grant university extension fertilizer recommendation algorithms

"We are concentrating on corn right now with our Regional Crop Yield Estimation System," Joern said. "This system uses process-based models to predict corn grain yield instead of more traditional survey- and sampling-based approaches. More importantly, our Regional Crop Yield Estimation System can be run daily beginning in mid-June."

J&H Consulting recently licensed its nitrogen model to a large agricultural seed company and is in talks with another large company interested in licensing its fertilizer recommendations library. J&H Consulting is also seeking collaborative development and licensing opportunities with other interested companies.

J&H Consulting is a member of the Purdue Startup Class of 2016, and licensed its technologies through the Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization.