Digital solutions for efficient crop management: online support platform

Agriculture faces a major challenge in the coming decades. Productivity will need to increase by 60% to meet the food demand of a growing world population that will peak in 2050

Context of the story

It is imperative that production systems increase their yields through sustainable intensification (SI) that allows for increased yields in a sustainable manner. Currently, many agronomic management decisions are based on historical management and empirical relationships, which are rigid, preventing progress towards SI in production systems. In this sense, it is necessary to develop simple, freely accessible digital tools that allow producers and advisors to be assisted in making management decisions (cultivar selection, planting date and correct use of resources) to increase productivity, reducing yield gaps and the carbon footprint in a context of climate change.

The proposal involves the Austral University of Chile (Chile), the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina), the University of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay (Uruguay) and the National University of Agriculture (Honduras).

The Implemented Initiative

The main objective of this proposal is to create a free online platform to support decision-making in the agronomic management of the main crops in the Southern Cone. This tool will contribute to increasing the productivity and sustainability of production systems in the context of climate change.

The crops and countries addressed in the development of this proposal are: wheat, barley and canola (Chile, Argentina and Uruguay), corn, beans and rice (Honduras).

The technological solution

Create an open-access online crop management support platform with information to support farmers and advisors in their decision-making. The platform will bring the results of all three technical fronts into a single point of access, with an interface designed for growers and advisors rather than for modelling specialists. It will offer an interactive tool for selecting cultivars and sowing dates according to the thermal and photoperiod conditions of each environment, built on the CRONOS models calibrated with historical climate data from NASA's POWER database and validated against independent phenological data. It will also carry management strategies for narrowing yield gaps, identified from records held by the partner producer organizations, and carbon footprint estimates produced with the Cool Farm Tool, which shows which management factors account for most emissions. All outputs will be public goods, freely accessible and open to dissemination.

"Sustainable intensification is reached through crop management technologies that increase productivity without adverse effects on natural resources, enhancing climate change resilience and input-use efficiency"

— FAO

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Type of project

Agronomic Practices

Applied

Technological

Results

The first results are already available: the free CronoCanola model now includes 14 new rapeseed cultivars and 2 carinata cultivars, helping users in Argentina and Uruguay choose cultivars and sowing dates with up-to-date information on crop cycle length and the risk of frost or heat stress. Twelve staggered-sowing trials of wheat, barley, rapeseed, beans, maize and rice across the four countries will extend these models to new crops and to Chile and Honduras. A growth chamber now makes it possible to measure how much cold each cultivar needs to flower, key information in mild winters. By the end of the project, the platform will also offer strategies to close yield gaps and reduce the carbon footprint, and will remain an open-access public good, with a tutorial and training workshops in each country.