Building a web-based information system for variety selection in field crops - objectives and results

The selection of variety is an important decision in crop production, but information about varieties to base the information upon is volatile and comes from several sources. This paper describes a Danish information system to improve the basis for these decisions. The web-based system is targeted towards two primary user groups, farmers and advisers. The requirements for information and the technical skills are generally different for these groups, and the system has been designed to reflect this. The user interface has been developed without complicated query specifications to the database. Rather, users receive relevant, up-to-date overview information processed from large amounts of data, and, depending on skills, they can use hyperlinks to drill into more detailed information. The information is extracted and processed from a central database with web access. Rules for comparability of data have been implemented to ensure that only varieties with comparable data can be displayed together in the user interface. The focus of the paper is the relations between the intentions of the system and the technical solutions. A logging of the use of the system is analysed to evaluate whether the intentions have been met by the solutions. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.