During the week of January 17-20, 2023, the 18th DSSAT Development Sprint was held in a “Hybrid” format based on the success of the prior DSSAT Development “Hybrid” Sprints. The DSSAT Development Sprint was hosted by Global Food Systems Institute & Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering of the University of Florida. In-person participants included two representatives from the University of Kentucky, ten representatives from the University of Florida, one representative from the International Fertilizer Development Center, and one representative from Columbia University, while there were 16 on-line participants from the USA, Brazil, Mexico, Thailand, South Africa, Germany, and Spain. Six scientists from Turkey also attended the DSSAT Sprint to learn more about DSSAT development and advancement under the auspices of a US-Turkey bilateral project funded by the US Embassy in Turkey.
This was a four-day long crop modeling hackathon during which the participants collaborated on advancing the science of the crop models, data preparation and analytics, and the development and improvement of crop modeling tools and application programs. Progress was made on the development and improvement of new tools, including XB2, ATCreate, and Crop Rotation; on a conceptual inter-cropping model using components from the Cropping System Model (CSM); the development of an automatic mow routine called “AutoMOW” for the forage cropping module; improvement of the water logging routines; incorporation of ozone effects on multiple crops; soil temperature simulations; disease modeling; incorporating N-dynamics in the CANEGRO module; and many other activities.
The next DSSAT Sprint is scheduled for July, 2023 at the International Fertilizer Development Center, Muscle Shoals, Alabama, USA as a Hybrid meeting.
