Crop production – sowing, care and harvest yield
Design & TechnologyAgriculture, Forestry & AquacultureAges 12–13
Use it with your class: students open it from a link or a QR code, with no account needed.
Next in Agriculture, Forestry & Aquaculture
A crop bed is tracked from sowing day to harvest day: the plant germinates, grows, flowers and sets seed or fruit over the exact number of days for each crop. Students set the irrigation and fertilizer levels, choose which pest or disease appears, and while the simulation runs can click Water, Top-dress, Weed and hill up, and Control pests and disease at the right moments. The simulation shows soil moisture, nutrition, pest and disease damage, plant height by day, and the harvest yield in tonnes per hectare.
Lesson: Sowing, caring for and protecting crops from pests and disease; harvesting the crop
What it shows
Crop growth depends on several factors at once, and the weakest one limits the harvest. In this model the daily growth rate is the product of a water factor, a nutrition factor and the share of the crop not damaged by pests or disease, so a surplus of one factor cannot make up for a shortage of another. Both too little and too much water or fertilizer slow growth: waterlogged roots lack air, and excess nitrogen gives weak, leggy stems prone to lodging. Pest damage builds up over time, so early control saves far more yield than late treatment.
How to use
Choose a Crop, set the irrigation and fertilizer levels relative to 100%, pick a pest or disease, then press Run. Watch the soil moisture, nutrition and damage bars, and use Water, Top-dress, Weed and hill up and Control pests and disease when a bar shows a problem. Repeat the season with late or no pest control, or with irrigation above 100%, and compare the harvest yield in tonnes per hectare.
Parameters you can change
- Crop Paddy rice (100 days), Maize (110 days), Leafy greens (35 days), Tomato (90 days)
- Irrigation level relative to demand 0–160 %
- Fertilizer level relative to recommendation 0–160 %
- Pest or disease present None, Leaf-eating caterpillar, Rice blast / leaf spot disease, Stem-feeding planthopper
- Simulation speed 1–20 days/s
Questions to explore
- How much yield is lost if pests are controlled late in the season rather than as soon as damage appears?
- What happens to growth when irrigation or fertilizer is set well above 100% of the recommendation?
- Why can a high fertilizer level not make up for a shortage of water in this model?
