Agro-ecology of rice-based cropping systems : proceedings of the international workshop on agro-ecology zonation of rice held at the Zhejiang Agricultural University, Hangzhou, P.R. of China, 14 - 17 April 1993

This volume presents research proceedings of the S ARP theme 'Agro-ecosystems' in 1992'Agro-ecosystems' in -1993.Most of the papers are a selection of presentations that were given on the 'International Workshop on Agro-ecological Zonation of Rice', hosted by the Agro-ecology Institute of the Zhejiang Agricultural University at Hangzhou, P.R. of China, 14 -17 April 1993.At this Workshop, two days were devoted to the special topic of agro-ecological zonation and agro-ecosystems, and one day was devoted to a meeting of all SARP team leaders.Halfway the workshop, a field trip to the ecological farm at Fushang was organized.The Agro-ecology Institute of the Zhejiang Agricultural University is gratefully thanked for having hosted the workshop.Especially the SARP team supervisor and director of the Agro-ecology Institute, professor Wang Zhaoqian, and his SARP team have put much effort in the organization and smooth course of the workshop.A full list of participants is given at the end of this book.The SARP theme leaders of Agro-ecosystems, dr F.W.T. Penning de Vries of CABO-DLO and dr M.J. Kropff of IRRI have contributed much to the planning and scientific guidance of the theme in general.Most papers in this volume deal with the application of simulation modelling and systems analysis in extrapolating research findings from field experimentation to larger -regional to national -scales and to different agro-ecological environments.Though most authors focus on rice production, other crops such as corn (Wan Sulaiman & Singh), wheat (Sattar) and paulownia-wheat intercropping (Wu) are considered as well.In the first paper the use of simulation modelling in rice cropping optimization is illustrated by quantifying the relationships between rice yield and irrigation water needs on the one hand and weather, soil and management practices on the other (Bouman et al.).In the following papers, simulation modelling is used to explore irrigated and rainfed crop production potentials as a function of agro-ecological environments in a number of countries in Asia: Thailand (Pannangpetch), Philippines (Wopereis et al.; Garcia; Lansigan & Orno), Malaysia (Wan Sulaiman & Singh), Bangladesh (Bhuiyan & Ahmed; Sattar), Indonesia (Makarim & Las), China (Yang & Zhang), and India (e.g.Ramaswami & Selvaraju; Thiyagarajan et al.).In many of these papers, crop growth durations, optimum sowing and transplanting dates and cut-off dates were determined as well because of their importance in planning and optimizing cropping sequences.Four papers address the combined use of crop growth simulation models and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in quantifying and mapping regional crop production levels (Pannangpetch; Wopereis et al.; Bhuiyan & Ahmed; Garcia).Two papers address the specific problem of quantifying the uncertainty and variation in model input parameters (soil, weather) on regional scales, and their impact on simulated crop production (Bouman; Lansigan).The last five papers are all devoted to the agro-ecology -and the use of crop growth simulation modelling therein -of Tamil Nadu state in southern India (Palaniappan et al.; Budhar & Palaniappan; Ramaswami & Selvaraju; Thiyagarajan et al.; Jeyaraman et al.).