Professor Donald and others:

DSSAT is distributed with example data sets for each crop based on real
experiments.  The data are part of the standard DSSAT at no extra
cost.  These examples include local management as well as soil and weather
data and observed growth, development and final yield information.  We are
currently in the process of developing an experimental data base as part of
the ICASA activities.  We are planning to make the data for different
crops/models available via the ICASA web site at www.ICASAnet.org.  Issues
that need to be resolved include data quality and credibility, ownership of
the data, and acknowledgment/recognition if data are being used in new
modeling publications.

Regards,

Gerrit

At 10:12 AM 6/22/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>DSSAT would be more helpful to new users if one could buy complete file sets
>for individual crops, sites, years, etc.  Then these example file sets could
>be easily modified with your own data replacing the data in the example
>files.  This minimizes format and keypunching errors and allows you to get
>up to speed in using the software more quickly. From what I gather, you need
>to contact other users in order to get such data sets.  A system for
>accumulating and distributing dataset-files for individual crops at a cost
>(or free, even) would be very helpful.
>
>Bill Donald