Cotton growers are facing increasing pressure to manage resources more cost effectively and to be more accountable for the impact their decisions have on the surrounding environment. Decision support systems (DSS) have been developed to provide cotton growers with the best information available from research to assist with their management decision-making.

The aim of this project is to continue to identify critical issues where decision support tools can help growers and to develop and validate these tools. We have a range of new ideas and also requests from industry that need to be progressed over the next few years. This project will also maintain and support the existing software packages to ensure their ongoing relevance and performance. Finally, this project will also provide support for researchers such as developing programs to help with validation of models or present data on the WWW. The approach we propose to achieve this is to combine a dedicated programmer, to ensure that the most up to date software design and web management is used, with an experienced cotton agronomist (Ms Sandra Deutscher), to undertake field validation of software and to understand technical issues from the industry’s point of view when developing new tools.