Peter Laderach

Crop Niche Selection for Tropical Agriculture Canasta: Method, Manual and Case Studies Peter Laderach

CaNaSTA (Crop Niche Selection in Tropical Agriculture) is a spatial decision support system (SDSS) designed to aid the decision-making processes involved in crop selection and management. CaNaSTA is particularly useful for analysis of crops which have received little attention from research agencies and consequently little is known about crop response to environmental and management variables; crops which have long growth periods and hence frequently little information is available on long term management practices; and where little trial data may be available and much of the experience and knowledge of the variables influencing crop response are in the minds of experts and farmers. This book provides an overview of the algorithms and functionalities in CaNaSTA and a manual describing typical usage of CaNaSTA. Two studies are presented comparing CaNaSTA with other methods and CaNaSTA case studies are presented, highlighting the value of CaNaSTA analysis in specialised niche crops.