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 whole-farm models to improve decision making and support for farmers.

Part 1 reviews advances in modelling individual components of agricultural systems such as plant responses to environmental conditions, crop growth stages, nutrient and water cycles as well as pest/disease dynamics. Building on this foundation, 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) from 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.

Dr Kenneth Boote is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Agronomy at the University of Florida, USA. He is widely regarded as a pioneer in crop modelling, helping to develop the DSSAT software application program that simulates growth for over 40 different crops. He is presently serving as Co-Lead for Crop Modeling in AgMIP, the global Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project. Amongst his many distinctions, Professor Boote is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Crop Science Society of America and the American Society of Agronomy.

Professor Marcelis is Head of the Horticulture and Product Physiology Group at Wageningen University, The Netherlands. The Group is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading university centres of expertise on greenhouse cultivation and vertical farming. Professor Marcelis is an internationally-recognised authority on the use of light in greenhouse and other protected systems to optimise crop production.

Dr Gerrit Hoogenboom is Professor and Preeminent Scholar in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at the University of Florida, USA. With over 30 years’ experience and over 500 peer-reviewed publications, he is acknowledged as a global expert in crop modelling. He currently coordinates development of the Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT), one of the leading crop modelling systems. Professor Hoogenboom also co-authored the chapter on DSSAT in Burleigh Dodds Science’s successful 2019 title: Advances in crop modelling for a sustainable agriculture (ed. Ken Boote). Professor Hoogenboom is the Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Agricultural Science.

Dr. Bruno Basso is an agro-ecosystem scientist and University Foundation Professor in Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and W.K. Kellogg Biological Station at Michigan State University. He is a Fellow of the Soil Science Society of America and the American Society of Agronomy, and 2016 recipient of the Innovation of the year award and 2019 Outstanding Faculty Award at Michigan State University and the recipient of the 2021 Morgan Stanley Sustainable Solutions Prize. He is ranked as top 2% scientist across all disciplines and 0.006% in the field of Agronomy, Agriculture, Meteorology. He received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University.

Dr Claas Nendel heads the Research Group on Landscape Modelling at the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Germany. He is also Professor of Landscape Systems Analysis at the University of Potsdam. Dr Nendel is the Past President of the European Society of Agronomy and hosted, among other events, the first International Crop Modelling Symposium in Berlin in 2016. He is principal developer of the MONICA model which simulates biophysical processes in agroecosystems to allow assessment of regional impacts of climate change, and is internationally known for his contribution to agroecosystem modelling.