Towards management practices for sustainable agriculture : modelling initiative

A sustainable agricultural system is getting importance, looking at the persistence and the continuous support base it provides for our food and fiber along with economic and social services. Here, sustainable agricultural system is defined as a system which is capable of maintaining its productivity, satisfying livelihood of communities with minimal effect on the environment and safeguarding natural resources. Different agricultural managementpractices can help towards a sustainable agricultural production system, and these practices can be simulated through different process-based mechanistic models. This paper describes the role of these system models in designing a sustainable agricultural production system. The potential use of these models for future monitoring, investigating and maintaining sustainability through different management practices have also briefly been summarized