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 email [log in to unmask], or [log in to unmask]