Advancing collaboration and interoperability in crop modeling, the DSSAT team hosted the 20th AMEI Development Sprint from January 20–23, 2026, at the Department of Agricultural & Biological Engineering (ABE, UF/IFAS) in Gainesville, Florida. The event was organized in collaboration with the Laboratory of Ecophysiology of Plants under Environmental Stress (LEPSE) of the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food, and the Environment (INRAE).
The Agricultural Model Exchange Initiative (AMEI) (see GitHub and Crop2ML.org) aims to accelerate agricultural research by promoting the interoperability, comparison, and reuse of model components to improve crop simulation models. During this development sprint, participants focused on advancing the comparison of soil temperature modulesacross multiple crop modeling platforms. To evaluate these approaches, standardized simulation protocols were implemented using observed data from a bare soil temperature study in Ames, Iowa (USA) and FACE wheat experiments in Maricopa, Arizona (USA). In addition, new protocols were developed for wheat experiments conducted in Bushland, Texas (USA), and Avignon, France, expanding the range of environments used for cross-platform evaluation.
A second major outcome of the sprint was the initiation of comparative development of evapotranspiration (ET) modules across participating platforms. The first phase focused on decoupling potential ET formulations from individual models, followed by a cross-analysis of required inputs and metadata to define consistent simulation protocols for ET evaluation. Further progress and results from this effort will be presented in upcoming AMEI development sprints.
The University of Florida’s DSSAT modeling system was one of the core platforms involved in the sprint. Other participating crop modeling platforms included SIMPLACE, SiriusQuality, STICS, and MONICA. The sprint brought together contributors from multiple regions, including the United States (DSSAT team), France (INRAE and CIRAD), Germany (ZALF), with virtual participation from France and Germany (University of Bonn). The next AMEI Development Sprint is planned as a virtual meeting in late summer 2026.
