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Dumont, B., Vancutsem, F., Seutin, B., Bodson, B., Destain, J. - P., & Destain, M. - F. (2012). Simulation de la croissance du blé à l’aide de modèles écophysiologiques: Synthèse bibliographique des méthodes, potentialités et limitations. Biotechnologie, Agronomie, Société et Environnement, 163, 376–386.
Abstract: Crop models describe the growth and development of a crop interacting with its surrounding agro-environmental conditions (soil, climate and the close conditions of the plant). However, the implementation of such models remains difficult because of the high number of explanatory variables and parameters. It often happens that important discrepancies appear between measured and simulated values. This article aims to highlight the different sources of uncertainty related to the use of crop models, as well as the actual methods that allow a compensation for or, at least, a consideration of these sources of error during analysis of the model results. This article presents a literature review, which firstly synthesises the general mathematical structure of crop models. The main criteria for evaluating crop models are then described. Finally, several methods used for improving models are given. Parameter estimation methods, including frequentist and Bayesian approaches, are presented and data assimilation methods are reviewed.
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Van Oijen, M., & Höglind, M. (2016). Toward a Bayesian procedure for using process-based models in plant breeding, with application to ideotype design. Euphytica, 207(3), 627–643.
Abstract: Process-based grassland models (PBMs) simulate growth and development of vegetation over time. The models tend to have a large number of parameters that represent properties of the plants. To simulate different cultivars of the same species, different parameter values are required. Parameter differences may be interpreted as genetic variation for plant traits. Despite this natural connection between PBMs and plant genetics, there are only few examples of successful use of PBMs in plant breeding. Here we present a new procedure by which PBMs can help design ideotypes, i.e. virtual cultivars that optimally combine properties of existing cultivars. Ideotypes constitute selection targets for breeding. The procedure consists of four steps: (1) Bayesian calibration of model parameters using data from cultivar trials, (2) Estimating genetic variation for parameters from the combination of cultivar-specific calibrated parameter distributions, (3) Identifying parameter combinations that meet breeding objectives, (4) Translating model results to practice, i.e. interpreting parameters in terms of practical selection criteria. We show an application of the procedure to timothy (Phleum pratense L.) as grown in different regions of Norway.
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Hoffmann, H., Zhao, G., Asseng, S., Bindi, M., Biernath, C., Constantin, J., et al. (2016). Impact of spatial soil and climate input data aggregation on regional yield simulations. PLoS One, 11(4), e0151782.
Abstract: We show the error in water-limited yields simulated by crop models which is associated with spatially aggregated soil and climate input data. Crop simulations at large scales (regional, national, continental) frequently use input data of low resolution. Therefore, climate and soil data are often generated via averaging and sampling by area majority. This may bias simulated yields at large scales, varying largely across models. Thus, we evaluated the error associated with spatially aggregated soil and climate data for 14 crop models. Yields of winter wheat and silage maize were simulated under water-limited production conditions. We calculated this error from crop yields simulated at spatial resolutions from 1 to 100 km for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Most models showed yields biased by <15% when aggregating only soil data. The relative mean absolute error (rMAE) of most models using aggregated soil data was in the range or larger than the inter-annual or inter-model variability in yields. This error increased further when both climate and soil data were aggregated. Distinct error patterns indicate that the rMAE may be estimated from few soil variables. Illustrating the range of these aggregation effects across models, this study is a first step towards an ex-ante assessment of aggregation errors in large-scale simulations.
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