To celebrate 30 years of APSIM, in silico Plants is publishing a Special Issue featuring advances in the development and application of the plant and crop models of the Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator (APSIM). This Special Issue complements the APSIM Symposium held at the 26th International Congress on Modelling and Simulation (MODSIM2025), adding another highlight to the APSIM milestone.

This issue will feature works presented at the APSIM Symposium as well as other contributions, highlighting advancements in biophysical process representation in APSIM plant and crop models, modelling of agriculture systems (field crop, pasture, agroforestry), modelling and software infrastructure, and the integration with emerging technologies like genomics, phenomics, remote sensing, data science, artificial intelligence, and new pathways for innovation. This Special Issue also aims to showcase future APSIM plant and crop model development and application pathways.

We encourage contributions directly on advancing and/or applying APSIM plant and crop models on the following topics:

• Development of improved capabilities in plant/crop models and related tools
• Modelling soil-plant-climate interactions with a primary focus on plant and crop
• Cropping systems, pasture management, agroforestry (may include mixed farming systems with a primary focus on plants and crops).
• Plant and crop GxExM adaptation to current and changing environments
• Global and/or large-scale crop, pasture, agroforestry production systems analysis, parameter estimation, and data assimilation
• Integrating APSIM with emerging technologies

If you are interested in contributing to this Special Issue, please contact Dr. Alex Wu (c.wu1@uq.edu.au) in the first instance, and provide a tentative title, list of authors, and a short abstract.