Abstract

This paper presents the development of a decision support system (DSS) called ONVAREF for screening of new onion varieties being released. The system is a windows oriented, user-friendly, database driven, having excellent graphical user interface (GUI), designed using 4GL, which works on searching and matching principle to spawn large database comprising of dozens of characteristics suitable for judging originality of a variety under screening. It is also capable of assessing closeness of existing varieties with the one being screened. The accuracy of decision making process provided by ONVAREF has been found 93.33% as compared to 53.33% by manual screening. It is 123% time efficient as compared to paper based assessment manual from which the computer programme was evolved.

Key words: Decision support system, modeling, database driven decision support system (DSS), database management system (DBMS), decision making.