In the 1990s IFDC started developing and establishing an IDSS in Uruguay in collaboration with the National Agricultural Research Institute (INIA). The IDSS-Uruguay is using a GIS to link: (1) National and regional statistics (yields, areas, prices), (2) Existing databases of experimental results and surveys, (3) Crop/pasture/soil simulation models (DSSAT, Agricultural Production Systems Simulator—APSIM, CENTURY), (4) Remotely sensed information (Landsat, Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer—AVHRR, Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer—MODIS), and (5) Probabilistic seasonal climate forecasts. Some examples of the products that are being obtained with the Uruguayan IDSS include:

• Land feasibility studies / Agro-Ecological Zoning—Oriented to answer questions such as: What is the best use for specific land units? What is the best land unit for a specific use? The system is also being used to study the coincidence of land use feasibility and current land use (e.g., what proportion of the wheat is being grown in unfeasible soils?) The used method is sufficiently flexible as to consider agronomic practices that may change the feasibility of a certain use (e.g., a given land unit may not be feasible for crop production under conventional tillage but feasible under no-till).

• National and regional crop yield and crop production forecasts—Combining remote sensing, simulation models, seasonal climate forecasts, and field surveys issue periodic forecasts of sown area and expected crop yield.

• Drought/flood alert systems—Based on remote sensing for continuous monitoring of land seasonal climate outlooks. The government of Uruguay has used this drought alert system to define priority regions to receive aid, prepare population, etc.

• Impact assessments such as (1) Impact of introducing a rice-based cropping system in the natural grasslands of northern Uruguay; (2) Expected impact of climate change scenarios on agricultural production.

• Agronomic recommendations including fertilizer use, adapted to most likely climatic conditions in the upcoming growing season considering seasonal climate outlooks.

• New inexpensive methods to optimize fertilizer use with hand-held electromagnetic reflectance sensors using availability indices such as normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), green-NDVI, and other new indices.

These studies are being conducted at different scales: (1) National-regional scale useful for governmental planning agencies, (2) Whole-farm analyses to assist farmers planning and decision-making processes, (3) Experimental station for assisting NARES in field experimentation. Examples of the latter include: screening a large number of potential treatments and selecting a few that are included in field trials; exploring desired phenological characteristics of cultivars for plant breeding programs; integrating the research results for simulated farming systems.

For more information on this project, contact Dr. Walter E. Baethgen--baethgen@undp.org.uy

Return to Programs/Projects