Decision support, research modeling and climatic risk in Australian broadacre agriculture
by
Dr. Andrew Moore
Principal Research Scientist, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Plant Industry Canberra, Australia

This overview talk will cover some of the ways in which agricultural simulation models are being used in Australia to explore the short- and long-term consequences of farm management tactics and policies, with an emphasis on the way that modern software engineering techniques allow a "toolkit" of models be used efficiently in a range of contexts and combinations. Examples will range over the field, farm and catchment scales :- Yield Prophet, a decision support tool for tactical management of cropping paddocks- GrassGro, a grazing systems decision support tool - Grain & Graze, a national R&D programme seeking to improve the integration of cropping and grazing enterprise; and- CAT-3D, a catchment-scale model of the dynamics interactions between land use and hydrology. Decision-making by Australian farmers is strongly influenced by the risks arising from climatic variability, and so weather data sets are vital to all these activities. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology/QDNR SILO project to construct and disseminate consistent daily weather data sets will be discussed from a user's perspective

Andrew Moore is a principal research scientist with CSIRO Plant Industry at Canberra, Australia. After training as a vegetation ecologist, he joined CSIRO in 1989 and has worked there since on the modelling of pasture growth and quality, the management of grazing systems and the application of agricultural simulation models in decision-making. Andrew leads the GRAZPLAN project that provides decision support tools for grassland agriculture in temperate Australia. He has published over 80 journal and conference papers

Room G32 Earlsfort Terrace, NUI Dublin

8p.m. Thursday 23rd January, 2007