Near real-time agricultural simulations on the Web

Easy access to the Internet allows farmers to search for site-specific information and applications. The agricultural scientific community has developed computer simulation models and decision support systems during the last 20 years in order to transfer scientific knowledge to farmers. We describe an attempt to create an Internet-based decision support system for delivering weather data and executing near real-time weather application sand crop simulation models on the Web. A user accesses an easy-to-use interface to select management scenarios and run crop simulation models remotely The weather data inputs are linked to data collected by the Georgia Automated Environmental Monitoring Network. A user defines a scenario by selecting a crop, cultivar, planting date, plant density and spacing, irrigation schedules and fertilizer inputs. After defining all inputs associated with the scenario, the simulation model runs remotely on the server. The proposed distributed processes scheme can be implemented on different platforms. Client/Server, CGI, Perl and other Internet technologies are providing a cost-effective, robust and simplified access to crop simulation models for the user community.