Dear Dr Matthews
We had used the DSSAT models as tool to aid decision making in
South Africa. The ARC-GCI modelling group have done some
interesting application work over the last few years. The results of
this work are the property of the people paying for the data and
usually do not find it's way to publications. The application projects
we were involved during this year:
a. An organization want to buy a commercial farm and then
use it for small scale farmering development. The are two
farms available, the organization contact us to use the DSSAT
to simulate the maize production potential and risk of the two
farms. They use this information regarding to decide which
farm to buy.
b. Fertilizer company contact us to give them the optimum
nitrogen application need for a particular field. We use the
DSSAT to indicate this to them.
c. The freestate Dept of Agric. using CERES-Maize in yield
estimation. This is one of the inputs of NCEC. The NCEC
output go to FAO and SADAC early warning system. We
calibrated and do some development work on CERES-Maize
for South african Conditions.
d. We just completes a report on the impact of climate change
on South African Maize production. This will be used as
bases by a mitigation team for planning to minimize the
impact of climate change.
e. Mining company have bought land from farmers with the
understanding at the end of the open mine activities the land
will return to farming activities. DSSAT was used to determine
the maize potential and risk of the rehabilitated soils and if the
mining company where on target to restore the original
potential.
Hope this will give you some indication of the application of DSSAT
in South Africa
Andre
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