Project Title: Linkage of Grazplan Pasture/Animal Models to APSIM Crop/Soil Models and the SWIM water balance

Funding Body: LWRRDC

Commencement Date: 1 Oct 1999 Completion Date: 31 October 2000

1. Accelerate the completion of the ‘modelling protocol’ so as to enable simulations of crop/grazed pasture systems to be carried out.
2. Use this approach to link the SWIM water model with the GRAZPLAN pasture and animal simulations model.
3. Use this protocol to link a GRAZPLAN pasture model into a multi-paddock APSIM cropping simulation.

A capacity to analyse the water and nutrient dynamics of land under grazed pasture is a key requirement of the RAAL R&D program. CSIRO’s GRAZPLAN pasture and animal simulation models provide tools to meet this need but in order for them to be used for the purposes of the RAAL program, they need to be coupled to the cropping systems models developed by APSRU. This coupling will also allow the SWIM water balance module that is currently available in APSIM to be used with the GRAZPLAN pasture and animal simulation models.

A software system that links GRAZPLAN and APSIM modules to simulate a multi-paddock crop-grazing system.

Software that enables the SWIM water balance model to operate with the GRAZPLAN pasture and animal production models.