field of agriculture and the biological sciences. This
can be demonstrated by an analysis of the 80 references
used in the review of 200 years of the development
of agricultural meteorology in the US (Decker,
1994; see Fig. 2). Of course, many of the graduates
move on to careers which are not recognised as agricultural
meteorology: the influence of their training is
then difficult to identify, but it must indirectly provide
a substantial contribution to the development of the
discipline.
The dominant contribution to the development of
agricultural meteorology comes from agronomy. If one
considers that the scientific reports from the experimental
stations (20%) are mainly from agricultural
faculties of the various universities, the agricultural
scientific community contributes 57% of the research
‘effort’, with an input of only 16% from the meteorological
research community. There are, of course,
exceptions where graduates of meteorology (physics
and mathematics at the B.Sc. or M.Sc. level) have
continued their education in agricultural meteorology
(at the M.Sc. or Ph.D. level) mainly in the field of
soil–plant–atmosphere continuum and environmental
physics. A clear approach can be noted in India where
agrometeorology has been accepted as a subject under
agricultural science by the Indian Council of Agricultural
Research and Education (ICAR). The council
has identified ‘agricultural meteorology’ as a priority