Nitrogen Diagnosis and Decision Support

The considerable progress made in diagnosing nitrogen nutrition and modeling the impact of nitrogen on growth and yield (see preceding Chaps. 1 to 8) has disclosed many potential applications in crop management: forecasting yields and crop quality, deciding on fertilizer applications when a deficiency is diagnosed, estimating nitrogen requirements according to growth or yield objectives, etc. To develop decision aids, however, one must not only have an understanding of biological processes; one also needs sufficient knowledge of the background to decision making, the decision- maker’s constraints and objectives, and even his or her way of thinking (Cerf et al. 1990). As these two spheres are usually considered separately, the aim of this chapter is to attempt a synthesis between them so as to define more clearly (1) the qualities required of nitrogen nutrition indicators if they are to be useful in support of decisions, and (2) the procedural basis for developing and evaluating these indicators.

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