To address new environmental and social issues, crop models need to widen their scope and be linked to other tools. The crop model STICS was encapsulated in the modelling platform RECORD and new process-based developments were added to address environmental issues. We present plant and soil processes developed recently in STICS and describe three projects using STICS within RECORD: MICMAC-Design aims to design innovative cropping systems at field scale, integrating economic and epidemiological analysis and using a database to represent agricultural management; CRASH aims to develop and evaluate crop-allocation strategies at farm scale that meet water-shortage regulations, using links with databases, optimisation processes and farmers' representation; AICHA aims to analyse impacts of irrigation on the water table at catchment scale using links to a hydrological model, cluster computation, integrated economic and agronomic optimisation. Automated encapsulation procedures allow STICS and RECORD communities to work independently but to benefit from mutual exchanges.