Integrating Wheat-Quality Data with Online Mapping to Enhance International Grain Purchases

Kansas State University

Grain buyers act in the same manner as any other group of intelligent and proactive consumers, seeking the most accurate information about the product they intend to purchase. For grain suppliers, quickly communicating data regarding various measures of the quality of harvested grain is essential in marketing their product where buyers can just as easily be in Kolkata as Kansas City.

Interdisciplinary applied research involving the Department of Geography and the Department of Grain Sciences at Kansas State University is using emerging methods of delivering interactive, digital maps over the World Wide Web to facilitate and enhance U.S. grain purchases by domestic and foreign buyers. Integrating winter wheat-quality data collected from over one hundred sample harvest locations with GIS technology and geostatistical estimation techniques, interactive and near real-time maps are produced to illustrate wheat-quality parameters, including test weight, protein levels, and falling time, throughout a study area that stretches from Montana to Texas.

Owing to the integration of GIS software, database management systems, and Web-mapping software, estimates of wheat quality can be updated in near real time to create a dynamic online decision-making tool that keeps pace with the progress of the annual wheat harvest. These maps, which maintain the anonymity of grain suppliers, are already being used by international grain buyers to make more informed purchasing decisions.

Courtesy of Kansas State University.

Map Book Page [PDF]