Define Seasons

This dialog can be used to define the seasons. You can have 4-6 seasons or you can select 12 “seasons” to have monthly results. The duration of seasons is flexible, and the seasons are set by providing a starting day and month for each one. The default seasons are for the southern hemisphere, but it easy to change the months for the northern hemisphere. The first season in a year is also flexible, and this may be changed by moving the names. The default seasons are 3 months long for 4 seasons, and 2,2,2,3,3 months long for five seasons. The 5-season breakdown is used to get better information on spring growth which is important in pasture evaluation.

Number of seasons

You can choose 4-6 or 12 seasons. The 12-season option gives monthly results.

Seasons

For each season you can enter a Name and Starting day and month. The first season can start at any time in the year. Subsequent seasons must follow this in order of their starting times, allowing for a wrap around in dates at the end of the year. For example, if Winter was the first season of 4 seasons, the subsequent seasons would need to be Spring, Summer and Autumn in that order.

End of establishment

This is the date when the trial is regarded as established. The next day is the start of year 1. The establishment date should be the last day of the final season above, otherwise the order or the seasons must be adjusted so that this is true. This date must be after the start date, defined in the Edit Trial Information dialog. It should be entered in the format d-mmm-yy, e.g. 12-Feb-23.

Trim date

Often a pasture trial is trimmed to provide an even start of herbage mass after establishment. Adding a trim date sets the trial growth to zero on this day. For seasonal totals, if a trim date is not set, the first cut is allocated proportionally to the establishment period, using the trial start date as a zero initial cut. It should be entered in the format d-mmm-yy, e.g. 12-Feb-23. It is normal, but not essential, to have the trim date before the End of establishment.

Seasonal Colours

The trial columns headings are coloured by their seasons. For 4 seasons the colours are orange, violet, yellow and green. For 5 seasons the colours are orange, violet, yellow, green and purple. For 6 seasons the colours are orange, violet, yellow, green, purple and rose. If a column is protected, there is a strip of light blue at the start of the column heading before the seasonal colour. These are shown below.

Colours for 4 seasons

Colours for 5 seasons

Colours for 6 seasons

Action buttons

Ok	Save the changes to the seasons.
Cancel	Close the dialog without further changes.