Training the Next Generation of Agronomists on How to Use Crop Models for Cropping Systems Design – Third Edition 2026
An Undergraduate Course entitled “Use of Crop Models for Cropping Systems Design” was organized by The Department of Crop Production from the Faculty of Agronomy at Universidad de la República during the week of May 25-29, 2026, at Estación Experimental Dr. Mario A. Cassinoni, Paysanú, Uruguay. This Undergraduate Course was attended by 26 students from the career of Agricultural Engineering. The course was coordinated and taught by Dr. Gonzalo Rizzo with assistance provided by MSc. Santiago Álvarez, MSc. student Gian Franco Rodríguez, and MSc. Joaquín Peraza.
Participants learned about the processes that regulate crop development and growth and the interaction of crops with soil water. This was a hands-on course where participants had to quality control weather data, prepare weather and soil input files to run the Cropping System Model (CSM) of the Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT). Students explored concepts and approaches to calibrate genetic coefficients for different crops. The course also introduced participants to cropping sequence simulations, using DSSAT to run multi-crop sequences and analyze their outputs across different locations and soil types in Uruguay. The focus of the course was to use DSSAT as a tool to support agronomic decisions. To that aim, participants worked on questions that have to be answered when designing a cropping system or managing a single crop and then used DSSAT to find answers to those questions via analysis of CSM output.
This course was a follow up to the courses that were held in 2024 and 2025 at the Estación Experimental Dr. Mario A. Cassinoni, Paysandú and organized by the Universidad de la República in Uruguay.
