Development of an agroclimatological risk tool for dryland maize production in the Free State Province of South Africa

• We developed an agroclimatic risk assessment tool for the Free State Province.
• Main climate models are drought, frost and rainy season characteristics.
• The tool can be used by agricultural risk advisers, farmers and other stakeholders.

Decision support tools are helpful aids for sustainable natural resource management and deployment of these tools depends on their usability, appropriateness and simplicity. A decision support tool named “Free State Maize Agroclimatological Risk Tool (FS-Macrt)” was developed to provide agroclimatological risk information important to the production of rainfed maize in the Free State Province of South Africa. The tool can be used by farmers, extension officers, policy-makers and agricultural risk advisors and has two main parts: (1) climatological risk and (2) forecasting. The climatological risk component enables the user to obtain drought stress risk for 100-day, 120-day and 140-day maize cultivars for planting windows starting in October–January. The best planting dates based on the risk associated with the climatology onset and cessation of both rains and frost can be determined. Using climate forecasts obtained from the national forecasting centres, drought index can be predicted for different planting dates giving the farmer valuable information when planning for the coming season. The tool also has the functionality of predicting onset of rains using weather and climate forecasts.