Expert Systems in Agriculture: Determining Lime Recommendations for Soils of the Humid Tropics

Expert systems are computer software systems designed to simulate accumulated experience of human experts in making recommendations. This paper presents a prototype expert system for making lime recommendations in the humid tropics. The objectives were to: 1. Document current methods of determining lime requirements for highly weathered soils of the tropics. This objective was developed as part of the Tropsoils/Indonesia project, which is adapting and developing lime recommendation technology for the highly weathered acid uplands of Sumatra, Indonesia. 2. Provide a way of transferring current Tropsoils research within Indonesia for use by extension workers and others with limited agronomic training. 3. Provide an exploratory learning exercise for ourselves about how an expert system is built and what the potential applications might be