Advanced technologies for optimizing potato production practices

摘要

Agronomists are concerned with decision making, and proper and timely decisions go a long way in successful crop production. Earlier, the decisions relating to crop production were based on traditional knowledge handed down from generation to generation. Later on with the advancement in science, the component factors of production and yield came to be quantified mostly through the development of statistical models. These relationships though useful had their own limitations as they were location specific and the number of factors considered at a time was limited. Moreover, models were mostly empirical and could not explain the mechanisms governing the different relationships. However, with the progress in Information Technology (IT) and developmentof IT based packages for crop production received renewed impetus and more mechanistic models came to be developed. These models were also made more users friendly using decision support tools.