David Meek, Chair, and Kathy Yeater, Vice Chair

With the start of 2011, the American Society of Agronomy instituted a communities/sections structure to ensure interests and activities of all members are represented, promote the integration and accommodation of multidisciplinary sciences, ensure the organizational structure has broad interest and appeal, create a fluid and flexible structure that enables the organization to accommodate emerging issues, and promote relevance to prospective members.

The newly formed Biometry and Statistical Computing Section announces the creation of three communities started with current members responding to the most recent needs of applied statistical applications in the agronomic, crops, and soil sciences (ACS).

Communities organize around topical areas and are made up of groups of American Society of Agronomy members with common professional interests. The purposes of communities are to gather members, encourage scientific exchange and sharing of information, facilitate planning, enhance communication, and provide coordination of programs and services.

Communities within the Biometry and Statistical Computing Section include the following:

Statistical Education/Training for Researchers, led by Edzard van Santen (evsanten@acesag.auburn.edu). ACS researchers need statistical training to take advantage of modern analysis techniques and extract the maximum benefit from experiments they conduct. This community joins researchers from these disciplines to provide statistical training for research needs and advancement. Specific plans for the 2011 annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas, to take place October 16–19, include the workshop “Walk, Crawl, Run! Hands-On Training in Modern Data Analysis with SAS for Researchers” and a symposium, “Ways to Avoid Statistical Malpractice in Soil Research.” The focus of the symposium is statistical applications in soil science, with particular emphasis on, but not limited to, soil carbon.

Bioinformatics in Crops and Soils, led by Clare Coyne (clarice.coyne@ars.usda.gov). This community addresses bioinformatics training and software education across the ACS disciplines generating genomic information. For the 2011 annual meeting, they will present a symposium titled “Bioinformatics for Crop Improvement: Assay Design and Applications.” It will cover basic plant bioinformatics tools and innovations in gene/positive allele and SNP selection and application in plant breeding.

Spatial Statistics Applications, led by Jose Hernandez (jahernan@umn.edu). ACS researchers often deal with spatial variability in their experimental fields. Spatial statistics facilitate the development of models to estimate the influence of spatial dependence and provide a powerful tool for estimation of treatment effects, correlation structure, prediction of unobserved data, and the design of experiments. The goal of this community is to provide a venue to discuss current spatial statistical applications in agricultural sciences. For the 2011 annual meeting, the community is cosponsoring a symposium titled “Spatial Predictions in Soils, Crops, and Agro/Forest/Urban/Wetland Ecosystems.”

Persons interested in contributing to this professional society are encouraged to visit the American Society of Agronomy’s website for more information.