Hi Members of the DSSAT Listserver,
Ref. Attachai Jintrawet comments on "The Future"
The topic suggests that we talk about actions that will make the future more
like what we think it should be. There is notting that we can do about the past
except appreciate what others have done to bring us to this point. It is
certainly terrific  that we have DSSAT ver 3.1 to work with for teaching,
consulting, and future modeling improvements. It certainly appears that you are
using the DSSAT system in your teaching, and as such spreading the work about
the DSSAT system. I wonder how many more teachers are doing so?
I recently took the National and State (Calif.) Certified Crop Adviser Exam to
get a feeling of what level on knowledge was considered needed for Crop
Advisors. In some ways it would appear that the production farming is somewhat
ahead of the modeling community. This group expects knowledge about soil
salinity and its effect on yield. It also expects knowlwdge of fertilizer
requirements for both primary, and secondqary nutrients. They also expect
analysis of irrigation water so that it can be factored into the fertilizer
perscription as well as the irrigation schedual for managing soil salinity. Our
DSSAT models are silent on a number of these points. There are many features
that need to be added to our models if they are to be really useful to the
production system that should be the primary beneficiary of the modeling
efforts.
Many thanks for Attachai response to my concerns for the future. It was the only
responce from the 123 DSSAT listserver members. I wonder if it is a suitable
topic for discussion?
 
Ro Favreau
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