What’s new in the CRAFT Version 4.0?
The latest version of CRAFT V4.0 adds fast and easy installation of the software and MySQL server, creating a database and populating it with all reference tables. CRAFT V4.0 uses MySQL Server 8.0, updated 64-bit Windows applications, MS .NET framework 4.8 libraries, and schema generation using R libraries. There is also a new feature for automated uploading of daily weather data for temperature and radiation from NASA POWER and precipitation from the CHIRPS portal. The number of supported crops has increased up to 22 and CRAFT V4.0 can now provide a crop production forecast over a region.
History
To enhance the capacity of developing regions for within-season forecasting of the impacts of climate fluctuations on crop production, the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security (CCAFS) organized a workshop in 2012 in Sri Lanka entitled “Seasonal Weather Forecasts Linked to Pre-Harvest Estimates of Crop Production: Methodological Approaches.” The workshop employed a participatory approach aimed at gathering various stakeholders, including scientists with expertise in crop modeling, yield forecasting, monitoring systems, and climate, along with other relevant actors. The overall goal of the workshop was to collectively assess and identify the key challenges associated with existing yield forecasting tools for both research and operational use. The discussions highlighted the need for a convenient and user-friendly software platform to facilitate crop yield forecasting for researchers and operational institutions. It was also emphasized that this platform should be accessible, cost-free, and adaptable to support multiple crop models. As an outcome of this workshop, CCAFS initiated the development of the CCAFS Regional Agricultural Forecasting Toolbox (CRAFT), designed to support within-season forecasting of crop production, as well as risk analysis, and climate change impact studies. CRAFT was developed in partnership with the Asia Risk Center, Washington State University, and the University of Florida. With the termination of the CCAFS program, CRAFT is now being maintained by the University of Florida.
Functionality
The CRAFT application is based on the Microsoft .NET Windows platform. It includes a user-friendly client application developed in C# that provides the interface with crop models and a MySQL database implementation. The toolbox is integrated with two external engines: a crop model engine, DSSAT, for linking and executing the crop models, and the CPT engine for running Climate Predictability Tool (CPT) as a statistical package, developed by the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI).
Four types of projects can be created and executed using CRAFT: calibration, in-season yield forecasting, risk characterization, and climate change impact assessment. The calibration type project allows for calculating the modification factor and the equation for transforming simulated yield to the regional-level yield based on observed regional yield. The yield forecast type project runs the crop model, uses the calibration modifier to determine the calibrated yield, and executes CPT, resulting in the in-season yield forecast. The risk characterization type project runs the crop model for various environmental and management scenarios and estimates the associated risk. The climate change type project assesses future climate risk for crop production and determines high climate-risk areas for crop yield. In this case, the weather datasets should be associated with baseline and various future weather projections by General Circulation Models (GCMs) for emissions scenarios, i.e., Shared Economic Pathways (SSPs) and Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), adopted by the IPCC and reflect changes in atmospheric conditions, particularly in temperatures and/or precipitation.
Applications
CRAFT was utilized for high-resolution in-season crop yield forecasting for diverse maize environments in Ethiopia (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cliser.2023.100425). Figure 1 demonstrates the distribution of the April 1, 2020 yield forecast at the grid-cell level.
CRAFT has also been used to assess the impact of climate change on wheat production in Kazakhstan (https://doi.org/10.3390/su16010293). Figure 2 demonstrates predicted wheat yield differences between RCPs 2.6–4.5 (a), 4.5–8.5 (b), and 2.6–8.5 (c) for the North Kazakhstan region.
More details
For a more detailed description of CRAFT, see the publication entitled “A multi-scale and multi-model gridded framework for forecasting crop production, risk analysis, and climate change impact studies,” published in Environmental Modeling and Software (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2019.02.006).
CRAFT is freely available and can be requested using the following link: https://craft.dssat.net/
YouTube videos are available for guidance on downloading and installing the CRAFT software: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL16zRYC6KvcEGfE8q0xM59evZF0lf69ZI.
