14^th AMEI Development Sprint

During the week of February 19-23, 2024, the DSSAT Team from the University of Florida (UF) participated in the 14^th AMEI Development Sprint hosted by the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) located in Müncheberg, Germany. This 14^th AMEI Development Sprint was a continuation of the 13^th AMEI Development Sprint that was hosted at the University of Florida, USA, in December, 2023, and the 12^th AMEI Development Sprint that was hosted by INRAE, France, in September, 2023.

The Agricultural Model Exchange Initiative (AMEI), accessible on GitHub and Crop2ML.org, aims to enhance agricultural research through the application and development of crop simulation models. During the recent AMEI Development sprint, participants dedicated their efforts to advancing the comparison and exchange of soil temperature modules across diverse crop modeling platforms. In this endeavor, the University of Florida’s DSSAT (www.DSSAT.net) was one of the platforms involved in the development. Collaborating closely with DSSAT were other notable crop modeling platforms including BioMa, SIMPLACE, SiriusQuality, STICS, and Monica, all actively participating in the process. The significance of accurately simulating soil temperature directly impacts soil biophysical and chemical processes, consequently influencing crop growth, development, and yield.

The AMEI Development Sprint included participants from the University of Florida, USA, from INRAE and CIRAD, France, from the University of Bonn and ZALF, Germany, as well as virtual participants from CREA and JRC, Italy. The next AMEI Development Sprint is tentatively scheduled for this Fall and will be hosted by INRAE in Montpellier, France.

The activities associated with AMEI have resulted in several papers including:

• “Crop modeling frameworks interoperability through bidirectional source code transformation” authored by C.A. Midingoyi, C. Pradal, A. Enders, D. Fumagalli, P. Lecharpentier, H. Raynal, M. Donatelli, D. Fanchini, I.N. Athanasiadis, C. Porter, G. Hoogenboom, F.A.A. Oliveira, D. Holzworth, and P. Martre, published in Environmental Modeling & Software 168 (2023) 105790. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2023.105790.
• “Crop2ML: An open-source multi-language modeling framework for the exchange and reuse of crop model components” authored by C.A. Midingoyi, C. Pradal, A. Enders, D. Fumagalli, H. Raynal, M. Donatelli, I.N. Athanasiadis, C. Porter, G. Hoogenboom, D. Holzworth, F. Garcia, P. Thorburn, P. Martre, 2021.  Environmental Modelling & Software, 142 (2021) 105055. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2021.105055
• “Reuse of process-based models: automatic transformation into many programming languages and simulation platforms” authored by C.A. Midingoyi, C. Pradal, I.N. Athanasiadis, M. Donatelli, A. Enders, D. Fumagalli, F. Garcia, D. Holzworth, G. Hoogenboom, C. Porter, H. Raynal, P. Thorburn, P. Martre 2020.  in silico Plants, 2(1), p.diaa007. https://doi.org/10.1093/insilicoplants/diaa007
• “The agricultural model exchange initiative”authored by P. Martre, D. Marcello, C. Pradal, A. Enders, C.A. Midingoyi, I. Athanasiadis, D.Fumagalli, D.P. Holzworth, G. Hoogenboom, C. Porter, H. Raynal, A.E. Rizzoli, P. Thorburn, 2018. IICA. https://agritrop.cirad.fr/587805/