Harvesting Opportunities at the Intersections of Breeding and Agronomy through Modeling.

Agricultural systems are both complex and noisy.  Predicting credible opportunities for improving long term agricultural productivity and stability is a primary motivation for employing modeling methods to deal with the complexity. Contributions by crop breeding and agronomy research programs to improved cropping system productivity and stability have been described. In some cases the contributions have been modest and others substantial. Both breeding and agronomy have their own histories of developing models and quantitative methodologies as tools to support the goals of their research domains. These legacy modeling efforts have evolved independently. There is growing interest in seeking opportunities at intersections between the breeding and agronomy research domains. Drawing on our experience we will consider some examples of the types of modeling efforts that are emerging.