BID HOME | SWEETPOTATO SRE TOOL (ENTERPRISE LEVEL)
Seed Requirements Estimation (SRE) Tool is designed to help seed actors to
- Estimate the amount of seed required to meet demands of seed markets.
- Eliminate wastage by getting the appropriate quantity of seed required for business startup. Most seed producers either over estimate startup seed (leading to high financial implication due to wastage) or under-estimate the amount of startup material (leading to under production thereby not satisfying the seed demand)
- Identify production periods with detailed production calendar for each seed class thereby, able to visualize the proper production timeline
- Proper resource allocation; seed producers are given the projected amount of land required for production. This enables proper planning on utilization of land resources.
Parameter Settings for Sweetpotato SRE
| Country | Select your country. Each country has its own standard values which will automatically apply for the reports on selecting the country |
| Start Material | The seed you purchase or plan to purchase as a starting point for your business. e.g. if you own a screen house and buys TC from a laboratory, then your start material is TC Plantlet |
| Final Material | Exit point or final product you sell to your customer e.g. if you are a screen house owner who buys TC plantlets and sell QDS, then your final material is QDS. Even if you sell other products along the way like Basic Seed or Certified Seed, the final product is still QDS. The system will automatically calculate all other products you produce. |
| Type of Projection |
Forward Projection; select this if you already know how much seed you need/have for startup but would like to the system to predict for you information about potential production output (seed yield) for each seed class, land required, detailed production timeline (production calendar), etc. Backward Projection; select this if you know your desired quantity of the final product (e.g. QDS) but would like to know how much startup material to purchase in order to achieve your desired final product. The system will calculate and provide you detailed information on quantity of startup material, land required, detailed production timeline (production calendar), etc. |
| Quantity of Material | Please specify the quantity of materials based on the projection type you have chosen. If you chose 'forward projection' then enter the quantity of startup material you have, if you chose 'backward projection', then enter the quantity of your desired final material. |
| Starting time | Please specify the year and month you would like to start the seed production. The system will use this month to project ahead and give you detailed production calendar and production timeline so that you visualize how long the production will take and the exact number of days or months. |
| Number of pre-basic harvests |
This will only display/show if you are producing seed class which involves pre-basic seed. It will be hidden for other seed classes. Specify how many harvest you do for pre-basic seed (for Uganda, its called Basic Seed). The range is from 1-5. |
| Parameters for projection |
Standard parameters is selected automatically when you start the tool. But you can chose to change and use your own parameters in case your production circumstance is different from the standard parameters. The standard parameters were developed based on data from several seed producers and were reviewed by several seed actors. If you do not change the parameters, the system will use the recommended parameters for sweetpotato seed production. |
| Run Projection | Click this button to run the projections and see results after you have fully set the parameters. |
| Export Results to Excel |
Select this in order to export the projection results into MS Excel. ** When you open the exported file, your MS Excel software may display a warning "The file format extension do not match". This is normal, click on YES then excel will open the file. When excel opens the file, click on File> Save as> Select you folder > Change file format i.e. Save as type to Excel Workbook> then save. This will help excel to format the result. |
SRE Summary Report
This report gives the full summary of production. This summary has helped seed producers to have an overall overview of their production in a short format that can only be read in about 5-10 minutes. Its provides the seed producer with summary of:
- Overall production period (start to end date, and total duration in terms of months and days).
- Summary for each seed class in the business model is provided with information such as quantity of start material and equivalence in a standard bag, production area (hectares / acres / square meters), the next seed class and the amount of seed that will be obtained from the seed class (and equivalence in bags).
Seed Production Calendar
This report gives the detailed, step-by-step seed production calendar. This is to enable the seed producer to properly plan their production schedules based on accurate data. The calendar is auto-generated based on parameters set by the seed producer. The following are produced in the calendar report:
| Category/Start Material | This specifies the seed class or startup material. |
| Production Environment |
This specifies the known media for production of the specified seed class e.g. Laboratory, screen house, open field, etc. When a seed class is harvested more than once, the production environments are labelled 1, 2, 3, etc. depending on the number of harvests from the 'parent' plant for that seed class. E.g. harvesting basic seed 3 times will produce certified seed for field 1, 2, 3. |
| Start date | Date at which the production of the seed for the seed class is started or is to be started. Each start date considers the re-harvests which are precisely calculated based on seed production duration. |
| Start Quantity | The amount of start-up materials which goes into every subsequent seed stage. |
| Production area | The land area required for producing seed at each stage. This is given in terms of hectares / acres / square meters. Measurements in square meters will only be shown for areas less than 0.25 acres. |
| Maturity Period | Duration it takes for the material to be mature for harvest or re-harvest. This is measured in days or weeks. |
| Harvest Material | The material harvested as a product from each seed stage |
| Harvest Date | The estimated date of harvest of the material. This is based on the maturity timeline. |
| Harvest Quantity | The amount of seed produced (yield) as a final product for each stage. This is separated by production environment. |
| Qty (bags) | This is the equivalence of seed harvested in terms of bags. Some stages do not involve seed that can be measured in bags, therefore, the conversion is not provided in the summary. |
Seed Projection Parameters
The parameters are hidden when the tool starts up. The user is able to choose to:
- 'Show Parameters' in order to see all the parameters used in the projection.
- 'Hide Parameters' in order to hide all parameters.
All parameters displayed will be the ones used in the projection; if the user had set their own parameters, the values he/she had changed will be shown in the table of parameters instead of the standard value.
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