ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a process-level cotton crop simulation model, how such a model led to an expert system to expedite its use, and how these technologies can be used in crop management. It provides information on crop production technologies. In the 1980s, scientists at the Crop Simulation Research Unit recognized that a major limitation to the wide use of GOSSYM as a crop management tool by growers was the lack of a user-friendly interface and the lack of knowledge of how to plan a set of simulation runs to support decision making. An expert system crop management expert (COMAX) was developed and coupled with GOSSYM to provide assistance for both of those activities and to automate some management decision aids. In the commercially available version of GOSSYM/COMAX, an empirical model of soil temperature is used that is based on a regression of air temperature and measured soil temperature at four depths.
