A Climate Impact Assessment workshop was held on December 10th to introduce ACCEPT to stakeholders in the Jamaican agriculture sector, including representatives from MICAF, CARDI, CASE, MEGJC, PIOJ, and the Water Resources Authority (WRA). The workshop provided an overview of the impacts of climate change on agriculture in the Caribbean, including preliminary findings on crop growth and yield. It also offered training in the software application, Decision Support System for Agro-technology Transfer (DSSAT). Participants expressed much interest and satisfaction with the outcomes. ACCEPT stands for Agricultural Climate Change Evaluation for Production, Transformation and Resilience Project. It is a public-private collaboration between the UWI Departments of Physics and Life Sciences, the D&G Foundation, Red Stripe and the Regional PPCR. It is funded by the Adaptation Programme and Financing Mechanism (AP&FM) of the national track of the Pilot Programme for Climate Resilience (PPCR), managed by the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica and implemented by the UWI. Under the project, activities include measuring the impact of ecological factors on root crops, especially cassava; field trials, measurements of growth and weather parameters, and crop simulation models run under different climate scenarios. The project is also developing a user-friendly online platform to mainstream the use of crop modelling technology into yield prediction and optimization.

For more on the Department of Physics: https://www.mona.uwi.edu/physics/

For more on the department of Life Sciences: https://www.mona.uwi.edu/lifesciences/