APES, a modular model was developed in the SEAMLESS project (Van Ittersum et al., 2008) to assess, in different EU regions, the impact of farm management on crop production and environmental externalities. Such purpose assumes the capability of APES to simulate cropping systems in a wide range of climate, soil and crop management. The main topic of this study is to evaluate APES, under different stresses and management practices (temperature, water and nitrogen), to simulate crop production and nitrogen and water dynamics. For this evaluation, APES was compared to the CropSyst (Stöckle et al., 2003) model (widely evaluated and used under different biophysical conditions and management practices). An explicit description of the limitations and specificities of each modelling approach is related to the behaviour of each model in different situations.