Project Title: Developing database and knowledge-based resources for commercial advisers using the cropping systems simulator APSIM

Funding Body: GRDC

Commencement Date: 01/07/98 Completion Date: 30/06/99

• To develop soil, weather, and crop databases that will enable farm advisers to access data that are necessary for specifying and APSIM simulation.
• To support advisers in becoming proficient users of APSIM by providing a knowledge-based system that will assist advisers minimize error when specifying variable for which they do not have measured data.

Monitoring of soil resources and simulation of relevant management scenarios are highly valued by an increasing number of farmers and advisers in the Northern Region. Amongst a significant sector of the farming community there now exists a market for timely and high quality interactions based on the FARMSCAPE (Farmers, Advisers, Researchers, Monitoring, Simulation, Communication and Performance Evaluation) approach to delivering these technologies.

Current R&D (Project CSC22) has indicated the feasibility of transferring monitoring and simulation technology to the advising industry. However, the investment in developing in-house APSIM user expertise is much higher than originally expected. The challenge now is to implement ways of meeting increasing farmer demands in the Northern Region. This must be achieved without compromising the standard of system simulation and human interactions that created the current interest and confidence. Farmers and advisers require that simulations be customized to individual farms or paddocks and that results meet a high standard of accuracy.

The high demands of training and support required for APSIM is a constraint to the capacity of the advising industry to become competent APSIM users. A major problem is the lack of expertise in correctly specifying input values for soil and crop files and in accessing the relevant weather and soil characterization files that are available to researchers within APSRU. This project will develop, in consultation with the advising industry, tools and resources to overcome these constraints to the use of APSIM.