Agriculture system modeling is an effective tool in assisting agriculture practitioners to make crop calendar and to set up crop management strategies. Integration of the toll with climate forecast modeling will provide greater help for decision makers and farmers to set up better drought coping strategies. However the adoption of this tool is constrained by limited availability of long historical
daily climatic data. This study indicates that the use of climatic data generator can solve this problem. Application of this approach at Pusaka Negara was assessed. It is suggested that when April SOI phase is rapidly falling or constantly negative (indicating EL-Nino years), keeping planting rice in the dry season is not recommended. Farmers may need to change their crops to non-rice crops requiring less water. The latest planting time for these crops in the El-Nino years should be first week of May. If the harvesting of first rice crops occur after 1st week of May, it is suggested that the land should be fallowed.
Peer-reviewed publication