Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Based on specific crop requirements (Russell
1990
; Reinds and Van Lanen
1992
; Wolf et al.
2004
; Alterra and INRA
2005)
, ten crop suitability filters were
developed. An example of such a filter is the altitude filter, which excludes crops
from areas with unfavourable temperatures for crop production. The PEG contains
an adapted version of ROTAT (Dogliotti et al.
2003)
. ROTAT is a tool to generate
feasible crop rotations based on agronomic rotation suitability filters in a flexible
and transparent manner. An example of a rotation suitability filter from ROTAT that
was re-used in the PEG is the crop frequency filter, which limits the crop frequency
in a rotation.
Production Technique Generator
The PTG is a tool to generate alternative production techniques for a feasible set
of crop rotations. A production technique is a complete set of agronomic inputs
characterized by type, level, timing and application technique (Van Ittersum and
Rabbinge
1997)
. First, the PTG creates alternative management practices based on
user defined parameters and agronomic expert rules. Second, the PTG combines
different alternative management practices into production techniques. The complete
set of inputs consists of the following management practices (Fig. 5.
3
):
-
General management includes all operations that are mandatory for a
successful harvest such as sowing, harvesting, clipping, pruning and field
inspection.
Water management includes rain fed or irrigated production; for irrigation, the
-
method of application (sprinkler, furrow, etc.), timing rules and amounts must be
described.
Nutrient management includes a description of the level of application, type of
-
nutrient, method of application and dose/timing of application of nutrient
management.
Weed pest and disease management includes packages that describe all
-
operations required to achieve a well-defined control level of weeds, pests
and diseases for a crop.
Conservation management includes operations aimed at soil conservation and
-
landscape and biodiversity management.
Technical Coefficient Generator
The TCG converts the agronomic input and output coefficients generated by the
Surveys on CA, PEG and PTG in APES and FSSIM-MP compatible inputs.
The TCG extracts data from the farm typology (Andersen et al.
2007)
to define
the farm types for FSSIM-MP. The result of the TCG is a fully quantified set of
agricultural activities (Technical Coefficient Matrix) that can be transferred to
FSSIM-MP.
