A COMPUTER-PROGRAM TO ANALYZE SINGLE-SEASON CROP MODEL OUTPUTS

Computer simulation models of the growth, development, and yield of an nual crops can produce large quantities of data, especially if a simul ation experiment involves many treatments and replications across diff erent years. Computer software was written to perform simple analyses of such experiments, allowing the user to identify those treatments th at are productive, stable, economically attractive, environmentally so und, or otherwise suitable for the purposes of the investigator. The c omputer program, which runs on a DOS (IBM-compatible) personal compute r, can interface with output files produced by any crop model run on a ny other computer that conforms to a common output file structure. Sum mary statistics for a wide variety of model output variables are calcu lated and presented to the user in a number of tabular and graphical f orms. Net monetary returns and gross margins can also be calculated, a nd price-cost variability can be taken into account in the analysis. T he user can perform an economic comparison of simulation treatments us ing mean-Gini stochastic dominance or, visually, mean-variance analysi s. The results of all calculations and analyses are written to an outp ut file that can be manipulated by the user to provide input to a spre adsheet or statistical package for further analysis of the simulated d ata. The program allows rapid, preliminary analysis of treatments from replicated simulation experiments and can help the user to identify p articularly promising treatments that warrant further evaluation.