Snow on Bear Wallow Mountain

Small Fruits and Berries

Blueberries
Over the past few years, the SCO has been working with Bill Cline and Benny Bloodworth in the Department of Plant Pathology at NC State to provide growers with web-based decision support tools for modeling chill and heat units for blueberries. These products, developed in collaboration with the North Carolina Agricultural Research Service (NCARS), utilize chill and heat models established by Dr. Mike Mainland. A 72-hour forecast of chill and heat unit accumulations is also made using weather output from the State Climate Office numerical weather model MM5. These decision support tools can be accessed here:
http://www.nc-climate.ncsu.edu/cronos/blueberry/chill_model/
http://www.nc-climate.ncsu.edu/cronos/blueberry/heat_model/


Blackberries
Climate office staff have also worked with in collaboration with NCARS and Dr. Gina Fernandez in NC State's Department of Horticulture Science to develop online tools for modeling blackberry chill units. Only one model is currently available to the public, however internal users can access all models for which we've calculated chill units:
http://www.nc-climate.ncsu.edu/cronos/blackberry/


Strawberries
For years, Dr. Barclay Poling in NC State's Department of Horticultural Science has been manually calculating and distributing strawberry crop advisories for strategic regions in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Georgia. The SCO has recently been working in conjunction with Dr. Poling to create a web-based decision support tool, known as FROSTY, to automate such advisories. This product, which is currently under development, will help users determine if action is needed to protect their crop at their given location, and give guidance on the specific action and recommended timing for implementation. More information on this tool can be found here:
http://www.nc-climate.ncsu.edu/strawberry