DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS IN A GLOBAL AGRICULTURAL PERSPECTIVE - A COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW

S.A. MIR¹*, M. QASIM², Y. ARFAT³, T. MUBARAK⁴, Z.A. BHAT⁵, J.A. BHAT⁶, S.A. BANGROO⁷, T.A. SOFI^8
1Krishi Vigyan Kendra (Farm Science Centre), Kulgam, SKUAST Kashmir, J&K, India.
²Krishi Vigyan Kendra (Farm Science Centre), Poonch, SKUAST Jammu, J&K, India.
³Krishi Vigyan Kendra (Farm Science Centre), Narkura Srinagar, SKUAST Kashmir, J&K, India.
⁴Krishi Vigyan Kendra (Farm Science Centre), Kulgam, SKUAST Kashmir, J&K, India.
⁵Mountain Research Station Khudwani, SKUAST Kashmir, J&K, India.
⁶Krishi Vigyan Kendra (Farm Science Centre), Ganderbal, SKUAST Kashmir, J&K, India.
⁷Krishi Vigyan Kendra (Farm Science Centre), Kulgam, SKUAST Kashmir, J&K, India.
⁸Krishi Vigyan Kendra (Farm Science Centre), Kulgam, SKUAST Kashmir, J&K, India.
* Corresponding Author : mir.shabir972@gmail.com

Received : 13-02-2015     Accepted : 21-04-2015     Published : 04-05-2015
Volume : 7     Issue : 1       Pages : 403 - 415
Int J Agr Sci 7.1 (2015):403-415

Keywords : Decision Support System, Sustainable Agriculture, Crop modelling, Management Information systems, Agricultural Systems Research, Integrated pollution control, Land use planning, knowledge representation and searching
Academic Editor : Dr. Elias Bhat, Prof. T. Padma
Conflict of Interest : None declared

In global agricultural, decision making at all levels are increasing rapidly due to unreliable and uneven distribution of combined experience of complex processes associated with the food production. Besides flaws in human initiative judgement have far-reaching consequences for the sustainable agriculture development. Therefore, aiding the reliability and deficiencies of human judgement and quality decision-making has been a major focus of research throughout the history particularly with the development of Decision Support Systems (DSSs). DSS is interactive computer-based system that help decision makers solve unstructured problems under complex and uncertain conditions by providing access to data through procedures and analytical reasoning. These systems have been designed to address complex tasks involving multiple disciplines of agriculture, enabling us to mimic the necessary requirements of crop with respect to the land characteristics so that the optimum objectives specified by the user is obtained. Experimental use of these systems has resulted in improved integrated crop production and management with restricted use of the natural resources together with improved farm income and reduced negative environmental impact. With the advent of powerful computation, efficient database management system, on-line analytical processing (OLAP), improved knowledge representation, efficient searching techniques, data warehousing and mining, Geographical Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS); DSS are being extensively used world-wide using state of art technologies, integrating multiple models for sustainable agriculture development from farm to fork, despite “Problem of Implementation”. Once the barrier is crossed, it will give a leading role to DSS in global sustainable agriculture.