Estimating the impact of environmental management on strawberry yield using publicly available agricultural data in South Korea

Steven Kim; Jung Su Jo; Vicky Luk; Sung Kyeom Kim; Dong Sub Kim

doi:10.7717/peerj.15390

Estimating the impact of environmental management on strawberry yield using publicly available agricultural data in South Korea

PeerJ. 2023 May 11:11:e15390. doi: 10.7717/peerj.15390. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Steven Kim^#¹, Jung Su Jo^#^{2

3}, Vicky Luk^{1

4}, Sung Kyeom Kim^{2

3}, Dong Sub Kim⁵

Affiliations

¹ Mathematics and Statistics, California State University, Monterey Bay, Seaside, United States.
² Horticultural Science, Kyungpook National University, Daegu, South Korea.
³ Institute of Agricultural Science and Technology, Kyungpook National University, Daegu, South Korea.
⁴ Applied Environmental Science, California State University, Monterey Bay, Seaside, United States.
⁵ Horticulture, Kongju National University, Yesan, South Korea.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Advanced information and communication technologies (ICTs) have made data collection more efficient for agricultural studies. Using publicly available database in South Korea, we estimated the relationship between the management of air temperature and relative humidity and the strawberry yield during two harvest seasons. Longitudinal data of multiple greenhouses were merged and processed, and mixed-effects models were applied to account both observed and unobserved factors across the greenhouses. The averages of air temperature and relative humidity inside each greenhouse do not take volatility of the time-varying variables into consideration, so we assessed the management of each greenhouse by the percent of time that air temperature between 15 °C and 20 °C (denoted as T_%) and the percent of time that relative humidity between 0% and 50% (denoted by H_%). The statistical models estimated that the strawberry yield decreases with respect to the number of days since harvest began and the rate of decrease is slower when T_% and H_% are higher. This study used large-scale multilocation data to provide the practical suggestion that air temperature and relative humidity should be maintained within the optimal ranges to mitigate the loss of strawberry yield especially at the later phase of a harvest season.

Keywords: Air temperature; Mixed-effects model; Open API; Relative humidity.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Agriculture*
Conservation of Natural Resources
Environment*
Fragaria*
Humidity
Temperature

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the National Research Foundation of Korea, Grant number 2019R1I1A3A01063693. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.