Book reviews 107

tifying climatic risks to crop production; optimising agronomic practice in response to climatic risk; decision making to reduce risk of crop fail- ure; advances in improved weather predictions; and setting priorities for risk-related agronomic research.

The book boasts contributions from world-renowned systems thinkers and researchers in agriculture which will attract readers. It is a mixture of reflections, reviews, and original research contributions. Despite the wide range of topics, including biological and social sciences, economics, methodologies, and frameworks for future developments, the book has a unifying theme: the importance of climatic risk in crop production, and the use of models and weather generators or long-term climatic records in quantifying climatic risk to crop production. The papers are coherent, well presented and informative, and represent the state of development and current thinking in systems-orientated research in agriculture. Some excellent and up-to-date applications of simulation models for optimising agronomic management for crop production in tropics and subtropics are presented.

The call for considerable expansion in interdisciplinary research involving all branches of physical, biological, and social science to ameliorate the effects of climatic risk should be acted upon. The book is highly recommended for skilfully merging the interests of field scientists and modeUers.

Upendra Singh

Simulation and Systems Analysis for Rice Production (SARP). Edited by F. W. T. Penning de Vries, H. H. van Laar and M. J. Kropff. PUDOC, Wageningen, The Netherlands, 1991. 369 pp. Price: Dfl 150.00. ISBN 90-22 0-1059-7.

SARP is a joint venture between the International Rice Research Institute in The Philippines and two organisations in The Netherlands: The Centre for Agrobiological Research and The Department of Theoretical Produc- tion Ecology of Wageningen Agricultural University. The intention of SARP is to promote a systems approach to rice production research. Five years' worth of progress has culminated in this book, which collects together papers from four different workshops held during 1990 and 1991.

Authors from 11 different countries have contributed to the book's 39 chapters, so an indication of the success of the systems approach is the extent to which diverse topics have been assimilated within SARP. This

108 Book reviews

has been achieved by adopting MACROS (Modules of an Annual CROp Simulator) as a common framework within which to carry out experimental research work. It is indeed a pleasant change to read about the applications of a well-researched model rather than about the development of another new one.

The book is divided into four 'themes', which largely reflect the agendas of the workshops from which the content is drawn: cropping systems; potential production; water, nutrients and roots; and insect pests, diseases and weeds. Individual papers are, by and large, concerned with case studies of particular aspects of rice production systems, although a few contributions discuss relevant experience with other crops.

However, this book is more than just a collection of case studies. It demonstrates that individual experiments take on additional value if they can be related to others that have adopted the same common framework. The SARP project has its priorities right; the world needs more rice, not more rice models. The same can be said for other food crops, and in this respect the book should be of interest to crop scientists working beyond the confines of rice research.

Gareth Hughes