Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig of the United States will receive the 2022 World Food Prize for her seminal contributions to understanding and predicting the impacts of the interaction between climate and food systems. Through designing and leading rigorous, collaborative observational and modeling research, she provided the evidence used by thousands of decision-makers in more than 90 countries to both mitigate and adapt to climate change in local, national and global food systems.
Hybrid Meeting, University of Florida | January 18-21, 2022
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
If you are attending the ASA-CSSA 2021 International Annual Meeting Salt Lake City, Utah, come and join us at the DSSAT Foundation Open Forum, where we will exchange what’s new on the crop modeling research, collaboration opportunities, and related data and tools development activities.
Day, Date: November 8, 2021
Start Time: 7:30pm
End Time: 9:00 pm
Location: Room 151 DEF of the Salt Palace Convention Center
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.
Cross-continental disease and crop modeling collaborations to beat back wheat blast
Cross-continental collaborations facilitated by the CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture thrive to beat back the threat of wheat blast in Brazil and Bangladesh.
Wheat blast disease is a major threat to smallholder farmers. The disease was first discovered in Brazil in 1985. Decades later it escaped from South America when it crept its way across the ocean and appeared in Bangladesh in 2016. Wheat blast outbreaks are linked to the right climate conditions. More accurate weather forecasts, coupled with disease models are key for farmers to adapt to the threat of the disease. Effective forecasting and warning systems can also help farmers avoid unnecessary fungicide use, thereby saving them money and reducing environmental risks.
Because the disease is new, knowledge of wheat blast epidemiology and modeling was limited in Bangladesh. That’s why scientists at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) reached out to Professor Jose Mauricio Fernandes, a Crop Pathologist, and Mr. Felipe de Vargas, a Computer Scientist, within the Universidade de Passo Fundo (UPF) in Brazil… Read more…
CRAFT: A New Spatial Yield Forecasting Tool
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.
Participants of the DSSAT 2022 Training Course held from March 14-18, 2022 at the ILRI Sholla Campus under the auspices of the Decision Support Modeling Tools for Ethiopia The Community of Practice of the Decision Support Modeling Tools for Ethiopia (DSMT-E) brings together users and developers of a wide range of simulation models. The DSSAT […]
During the week of January 18-21, 2022, the 16th DSSAT Development Sprint was held in a “Hybrid” format due to continuing Covid-19 Pandemic. The DSSAT Development Sprint was hosted by the Food Systems Institute and the Department of Agricultural & Biological Engineering of the University of Florida. In-person participants included six representatives from the University […]
Ghana’s first training event on the CCAFS Regional Agricultural Forecasting Tool (CRAFT) was held in its capital city, Accra, during 25-29 October to strengthen national capacity for in-season yield forecasting, assessing impacts of climate fluctuations on crop production and projecting such impacts in the future. Organized by the University of Ghana, University of Florida and […]
Original by Samantha Murray, October 21, 2021. Sam is a senior public relations specialist at UF/IFAS Communications. She loves learning about and communicating science. Supply chains for French fries and pasta sauce are surprisingly resilient to climate change, according to the predictions of a new study.The study’s authors made their predictions using an innovative modeling […]
This Special Issue of The Journal of Agricultural Science is dedicated to the iCROPM 2020 Symposium. It includes six papers that are based on both oral and poster presentations from the symposium, including the final keynote presentation. Read the Editorial:iCROPM 2020: Crop Modeling for the Futureby, Gerrit Hoogenboom, Eric Justes, Christophe Pradal, Marie Launay, Senthold […]
Texas A&M AgriLife study projects the genetic profile that cultivars will need to adapt Original by Kay Ledbetter, October 13, 2021. Kay Ledbetter is an associate editor/senior writer/media relations specialist for Texas A&M AgriLife. She is responsible for writing news releases and feature articles from science-based information generated by the agency across the state, as […]
Original by Brad Buck, October 7, 2021. A senior public relations specialist for UF/IFAS Communications, Brad is a huge Gator fan. He grew up in Gainesville, loves movies, sports and finding great stories to tell. Data sets are often easy to find but complicated to use because scientists store and use information differently, and they […]
Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig of the United States will receive the 2022 World Food Prize for her seminal contributions to understanding and predicting the impacts of the interaction between climate and food systems. Through designing and leading rigorous, collaborative observational and modeling research, she provided the evidence used by thousands of decision-makers in more than 90 countries to both mitigate and adapt to climate change in local, national and global food systems.
