SASTA Webinar
A SASTA webinar was held on 26 March 2026. The webinar featured two presentations from the agricultural section of SASTA Congress 2025. Both papers were winners of the Kynoch Award, based on content of the papers, as well as the quality of the presentations at the Congress.
Characterising Climate Change
SASRI’s Cropping Systems Modeller, Dr David Clark’s presentation characterised the changes in the rainfall and temperature across all the major sugarcane-producing regions of South Africa. The long-term (1980-2024) daily air temperature and rainfall records from the representative weather stations in each region were analysed by using the Climpact climate analysis tool to generate several climate change indicators. The preliminary findings showed a clear increase in the daily maximum and average temperatures for all the regions, but there was no clear trend for the minimum temperature. The rainfall analyses produced no clear trend for the annual rainfall amounts or extreme events for most of the regions, due to the high levels of inter-annual variability. Only the Midlands region showed a significant increasing trend in the annual total rainfall.
SASTA Paper: Characterising Past Climate Change in the South African Sugar Industry: Preliminary Findings for Temperature and Rainfall, 1980–2024.
Authors: Phillemon Sithole & David Clark.
Digital Data Collection for Biosecurity Surveys
SASRI Knowledge Manager, Ingrid Thompson’s presentation described how, until recently, a paper-based data collection system was used by the Biosecurity Inspectorate in the field for pest and disease surveys, and how the data were manually captured in an electronic format by administrators in each LPD&VCC area. To improve the efficiency of the data capture and processing, electronic data capture systems using ArcGIS Survey123 were configured for mobile devices that can be used in the field. The electronic data capture system offers many benefits, including increased efficiency and improved accuracy. Inspected fields are geo-referenced, and the captured data are stored in a geodatabase. The system is real-time and allows the visualisation of data using operational dashboards that are linked to the field data.
SASTA Paper: Introducing Digital Data Collection for Biosecurity Surveys at the South African Sugarcane Research Institute (SASRI).
Authors: Ingrid Thompson, Rowan Stranack, Sharon McFarlane, Iona Basdew, Sibongile Merile, Tulani Velem.
