PRO_PLANT—a computer—based decision‐support system for cereal disease control¹

The task of the knowledge‐based advisory system PRO_PLANT is to help farmers reduce to a minimum the input of fungicides, and in later stages all pesticides, while giving as good economic returns as high‐input routine sprays with their potential environmental hazards (e.g. ground and surface water contamination). The system was first developed for cereal diseases and is now (till 1994) being extended to the most important pesticide applications on field crops (cereals, maize, rape, potato, sugarbeet). It can be used by consultants or farmers as a stand‐alone version. PRO_PLANT at present consists mainly of disease‐specific knowledge bases for diagnosis of fungus infections in cereals and rules for optimized fungicide treatments. The scientific basis has been derived from expert knowledge and field trials over several years, and the knowledge representation is rule‐based. During a consultation, information on the field, cultivar resistance, seed treatments and fungicides is considered. Necessary weather data comes from the German Weather Service via BTX or from a small home‐run weather station. The prototype was first tested in 1991 and an improved version was then tested in 1992 with 40 consultants and 30 farmers. In 1993, the system will be used by the advisory service of Nordrhein‐Westfalen and commercially distributed to farmers.