Efforts have been made by a number of groups to increase flexibility in the way that generic crop templates are set up to make models more adaptable to different requirements. Processes are closely related to a specific system component and result in the change of the components state variables. A crop was defined as a system with a set of components such as phenology, organ genesis and biomass production.
From this, the idea of process oriented programming was developed where sub routines represent a process defined as "a series of events, which drive the dynamics of the system in response to system attributes and environmental conditions" (Wang et al., 2003 Wang and Engel, 2000).
They are based on the hypothesis that crop models can be constructed from a generic set of software classes that are then assembled and parameterised differently to represent the physiology of different crops.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license ().Įt al., 1989). Generic crop templates have been developed to address the problem (van Keulen et al., 1982 Penning de Vriesġ364-8152/© 2014 The Authors. This problem is relevant to all agricultural systems modelling platforms that provide the capacity to simulate different crop types (Brisson et al., 2003 Jones et al., 2003 Stockle et al., 2003). However, the development and maintenance of many models requires considerable time and financial commitment. To do this, a range of arable, pasture, vegetable, tree, bush, vine and weed models are required to represent different kinds of plant communities and their contributions to the water and nutrient balance of agricultural land. * Thematic Issue on Agricultural Systems Modeling & Software.Ī key purpose of APSIM is to simulate realistic long-term dynamics in agricultural simulations (Holzworth et al., 2014 Keating et al., 2003).
Note that the PMF (called Plant2 in internal documentation) does not stand alone and users will need to download the Agricultural Production Systems Simulator (.
The Plant Modelling Framework source code is freely available for non commercial use and can be viewed at /websvn/listing.php?repname=apsim&path=/trunk/ then clicking on the "Model" then "Plant2" folders. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND Received 30 September 2013 Received in revised form 1 July 2014Īccepted 3 September 2014 Available online 1 October 2014 Box 85084, Lincoln University, 7647 Canterbury, New Zealand MootcĪ The New Zealand Institute for Plant & Food Research Limited, Private Bag 4604, Christchurch, New Zealand b CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences/Sustainable Agriculture Flagship, PO Box 102, 4350 Toowoomba, Australia c Faculty of Agriculture and Life Sciences, P.O. Journal homepage: Plant Modelling Framework: Software for building and running crop models on the APSIM platform* These examples show the PMF can be used to develop models of different complexities and allows flexibility in the approach for implementing crop physiology concepts into model set up.Ĭontents lists available at ScienceDirect Wheat, another detailed annual crop model constructed using an alternative set of organ and process classes. Lucerne, perennial forage model with detailed growth, development and resource use processes, 4.
Oat, an annual grain crop model with detailed growth, development and resource use processes, 3. Slurp, a simple model of the water use of a static crop, 2. Four examples are included to demonstrate the flexibility of application of the PMF 1. The aims of the PMF are to maximise code reuse and allow flexibility in the structure of models. The PMF has an integrated design environment to allow plant models to be created visually. A plant configuration file specifies which mid-level and Function classes are to be included and how they are to be arranged and parameterised to represent a particular crop model. It also contains low-level Function classes which represent generic mathematical, logical, procedural or reference code and provide values to the processes carried out by mid-level classes. Other classes include mid-level Organ, Phenology, Structure and Arbitrator classes that represent specific elements or processes of the crop and sub-classes that the mid-level classes use to represent repeated data structures. The PMF contains a top-level Plant class that provides an interface with the APSIM model environment and controls the other classes in the plant model. It is the next step in the evolution of generic crop templates for APSIM, building on software and science lessons from past versions and capitalising on new software approaches. The Plant Modelling Framework (PMF) is a software framework for creating models that represent the plant components of farm system models in the agricultural production system simulator (APSIM). Abstract of research paper on Earth and related environmental sciences, author of scientific article - Hamish E.