In 2021, the Auburn University Official Variety Testing (OVT) Program contracted with Medius Ag, a third-party agricultural data management company, to store, manage, and maintain Auburn OVT data in an online database/tool available to all stakeholders. The goal was for stakeholders to increase efficiency and accuracy when making the first and most important decision of the season. What variety(s) should I plant?
Since the partnership with Medius Ag began, each crop under the OVT umbrella plus on-farm trials conducted by Extension have been included. Minor updates and new features have been added routinely as Medius has implemented ideas/requests. One idea that has become a reality is multi-state collaboration.
Thanks to a grant from the National Peanut Board, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida stakeholders have peanut data available through the Medius Ag platform. When looking at Alabama peanut data, stakeholders can click a button (3rd party data), allowing them to see data from all three states in one location. This collaboration gives stakeholders additional research-based support for making a peanut variety selection.
As of April 2024, results from North Carolina State and Clemson University are now available to Alabama stakeholders through the Medius platform. NC State is now sharing corn, wheat, and soybean data. Clemson is sharing corn, wheat, soybean, and cotton data.
The benefits of this new collaboration will be impactful. When industry and breeding programs release new varieties, they often look at the data more broadly than just within Alabama. Now, industry and breeders can make more efficient and accurate decisions about what varieties they should bring to market, which will benefit growers in the long run.
Financial support for Alabama’s collaboration with Medius Ag has come from Auburn University, the Alabama Cooperative Extension Service, and checkoff dollars from each of Alabama’s commodity groups: the Alabama Cotton Commission, the Alabama Soybean Producers, the Alabama Cattlemen’s Association, the Alabama Wheat and Feed Grain Producers, and the Alabama Peanut Producer’s Association.
Additional tutorial videos can be found here.