Introducing a new parallel computing system for calibrating genetic parameters within the crop modules of the Cropping System Model (CSM) of DSSAT The Generalized Likelihood Uncertainty Estimation Parallelized (GLUEP)
February 19-23, 2024, the DSSAT Team from the University of Florida (UF) participated in the 14th AMEI Development Sprint hosted by the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) located in Müncheberg, Germany.
DSSAT Open Forum Session during the 2024 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Agronomy-Crop Science Society of America-Soil Science Society of America
Ankara University, in collaboration with the University of Florida, developed a project entitled “Capacity Building on the Dissemination of the Use of Agro-technological Decision Support Systems in Agriculture.” The project has been funded by the US Embassy in Türkiye under the auspices of a US-Türkiye bilateral Program.
Hybrid Meeting, University of Florida, Gainesville | January 17-20, 2023
Improvement and Application of Agroecosystem Models: The DSSAT experience
Presented by Gerrit Hoogenboom during the Symposium – “Improvement and Application of Crop Growth and Agroecosystem Models for Knowledge Advancement and Sustainable Development” as part of the 2021 ASA-CSSA-SSSA Annual Meeting held in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
The DSSAT crop modeling ecosystem is one of the oldest and most widely used crop modeling platforms across the world. The success of DSSAT is based on the inclusiveness and participatory approach that has been used since the original development of the CERES and CROPGRO family of models and the emphasis on sharing data and model code. DSSAT is not just a software program, but an ecosystem of:
• Crop model users;
• Crop model trainers;
• Crop model developers;
• Models for the most important food, feed, fiber, and fuel crops;
• Tools and utilities for data preparation;
• Minimum data for model calibration and evaluation; and
• Application programs for assessing real-world problems.
Advances in crop modelling for a sustainable agriculture
This collection summarises key advances in crop modelling, with a focus on developing the next generation of crop and whole-farm models to improve decision making and support for farmers.
Chapters in Part 1 review advances in modelling individual components of agricultural systems, such as plant responses to environmental conditions, crop growth stage prediction, nutrient and water cycling as well as pest/disease dynamics. Building on topics previously discussed in Part 1, Part 2 addresses the challenges of combining modular sub-systems into whole farm system, landscape and regional models. Chapters cover topics such as integration of rotations and livestock, as well as landscape models such as agroecological zone (AEZ) models. Chapters also review the performance of specific models such as APSIM and DSSAT and the challenges of developing decision support systems (DSS) linked with such models. The final part of the book reviews wider issues in improving model reliability such as data sharing and the supply of real-time data, as well as crop model inter-comparison.
The CCAFS Regional Agricultural Forecasting Toolbox (CRAFT) is a software platform designed for yield forecasting at spatial resolutions of either 5 or 30 arc-minutes using an ensemble modeling approach. Currently the DSSAT, APSIM, and SARRA-H crop simulation models have been implemented for nine important food and feed crops using the AgMIP IT tools. CRAFT was an initiative of CCAFS and was developed in partnership with the Asia Risk Center, Washington State University, and the University of Florida.
Researchers increasingly seek to integrate results from multiple experiments. The ICASA V2.0 standards allow flexible description of field experiments. Major categories of data are management, soil, weather and crop responses. The standards may be implemented in diverse digital formats. Planned improvements emphasize data quality and appropriate usage.
Improving Soil Fertility Recommendations in Africa
The new book gives a detailed description of the application of DSSAT in simulating crop and soil processes within various Agro-ecological zones in Africa. The book provides examples of the application of DSSAT models to simulate nitrogen applications, soil and water conservation practices including effects of zai technology, phosphorus and maize productivity, generation of genetic coefficients, long-term soil fertility management technologies in the drylands, microdosing, optimization of nitrogen x germplasms x water, spatial analysis of water and nutrient use efficiencies and, tradeoff analysis.
The African Cassava Agronomy Initiative (ACAI) project scientists are working on optimizing crop models to improve the prediction of the AKILIMO decision support tools. The team is evaluating the performance of the Light Interception and Utilization (LINTUL) and Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT) to predict the attainable yield of cassava under well managed […]
On May 27, 2020, Dr. Myles Fisher passed away after suffering a stroke. Dr. Myles Fisher was an agronomist who after working for 22 years with the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), spent most of his career as a scientist associated with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) based in Palmira […]
We recently published a chapter entitled “The DSSAT crop modeling ecosystem” in the book “Advances in Crop Modeling for a Sustainable Agriculture.” This chapter provides a brief history of DSSAT, an overview of its functionality and applications, and up-to-date information on the status of the DSSAT Cropping System Model (CSM) and the DSSAT tools, utilities […]
The DSSAT community is committed to promoting development of all DSSAT models and software tools as open source projects. As of December, 2019, the DSSAT Cropping System Model (CSM) code is fully open and accessible via GitHub under the BSD 3-Clause “New” or “Revised” License. This license is similar to the BSD 2-Clause License, but with […]
The 12th DSSAT Development Sprint was held from January 6-10, 2020 at the University of Florida and co-hosted by the Institute for Sustainable Food Systems and the Department of Agricultural & Biological Engineering. One of the main goals of the DSSAT Development Sprint is to improve the science of the Cropping System Model (CSM) and […]
This collection summarises key advances in crop modelling, with a focus on developing the next generation of crop and whole-farm models to improve decision making and support for farmers. Chapters in Part 1 review advances in modelling individual components of agricultural systems, such as plant responses to environmental conditions, crop growth stage prediction, nutrient and […]
University of Florida (UF) researchers of the Institute for Sustainable Food Systems are developing ways to combat food insecurities in Africa. The African Cassava Agronomy Initiative is a five-year project to advance cassava farming by offering decision support tools. Farmers can access these applications to identify ways to maximize crop yield, improve root starch quality, and reduce […]