European Community network to develop a model based decision support system to optimise nitrogen use in field vegetable rotations across Europe.

This website is the home of the EU-Rotate_N project which was funded by the EU Commission under Framework 5 from 2003 to 2006; project number QLK5-2002-01110.

The objectives of the project were:

• To compile and integrate recent theories and knowledge of soil-nutrient-crop-atmosphere interactions into a generic process-based model
• To evaluate the effects of varying levels of nitrogen on product quality, gross margin and environmental impact
• To assess the new decision support system for fitness of purpose to predict nitrogen losses across cropping rotations in Europe
• To test the effectiveness of existing EU and national regulations on nitrate losses and industry sustainability at farm and policy level.

The main output from the project was a computer based decision support system, EU-Rotate_N which is available as a download from the link below. This is an updated version replacing the version available since August 2007.

Defra recently sponsored the development of a web based version which is available from the link below.

Access to both versions of the model will be obtained after filling in a simple registration form.

• Download the PC model (2-5 MB)
• Example files for web based version includes utility for reading output files
• Web-based presentation of EU-Rotate_N outputs (Simulation Reader)
• Example file for Simultion Reader 
• Download latest User Manual 

N.B The new version of the downloadable PC model will open all files including those generated by the web version. The older model will not operate the web based files without modification - see the manual.