Building a Crop Model for Integrated Yield Prediction and Sustainable Agriculture Planning

Agricultural sustainability and food security are paramount concerns in the face of evolving global challenges, including climate change, population growth, and resource constraints. Building a comprehensive crop model that combines multiple elements such as climate change effects on yields, water requirements, fertilizer use, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and socio-economic aspects is essential for making well informed decisions in agriculture. The proposed research expands on existing crop models, recognizing the complex aspects that affect crop growth and yield. The existing crop model including DSSAT (Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer), APSIM (Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator), and CERES (Crop Estimation through Resource and Environment Synthesis) are focused on crop growth, yield and environmental effects. Although these models have made significant contributions, there are still gaps in their capacity to comprehensively tackle the complex relationship between climate change, socio-economic issues, and sustainable practices. Current crop models tend to emphasize specific elements of agriculture, like impacts of climate or utilization of water, without considering the holistic picture. So, the objective of designed model is to understand the relationship among different parameters. There is a need for a comprehensive crop model that combines climate change, water management, fertilizer optimization, GHG emissions, and socio-economic aspects. This research is designed to fill this gap by building a python-based crop model (on global scale with some regional experiments) that integrates different modules i.e., climate change, water requirement modules to optimize irrigation practices and fertilizer uses efficiency models to optimize nutrient applications for assessing their impact on improved yield and reduced environmental impact. The developed model will support sustainable agricultural practices and assist policymakers in making well-informed decisions.