Introduction

AquaCrop.jl is a process-based crop growth modelling library designed to be used in environmental simulation software. It simulates plant growth over time (including canopy cover, phenology, biomass, yield, and other variables) based on management and environmental input data. It is a direct translation of the AquaCrop model developed by the FAO. From their website:

AquaCrop is a crop growth model developed by FAO’s Land and Water Division to 
address food security and assess the effect of the environment and management 
on crop production. AquaCrop simulates the yield response of herbaceous crops 
to water and is particularly well suited to conditions in which water is a key 
limiting factor in crop production. AquaCrop balances accuracy, simplicity and 
robustness. To ensure its wide applicability, it uses only a small number of 
explicit parameters and mostly intuitive input variables that can be determined 
using simple methods.

The original FAO's code is written in Fortran and available on Github. AquaCrop.jl is a Julia implementation that corresponds to AquaCrop version 7.2.

The core code of this package closely follows the original Fortran implementation. On top of the core code, we developed an API that makes it easy to configure and run the simulations in several ways. It enables exploring and interacting with state variables at run time, opening up the possibility of dynamic, bidirectional model coupling. These new features increase the interoperability of the model compared to its original implementation, making it more easily accesible to growing number of interdisciplinary environmental modellers working with Julia.

The model is open-source and available on Github under a BSD-3 license. It was developed as a component of the Persefone.jl model of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig. Development was funded through the project CAP4GI by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), within the framework of the Strategy "Research for Sustainability" (FONA) as part of its Social-Ecological Research funding priority, funding no. 01UT2102A.

Citing

If you use AquaCrop.jl in your scientific work, please cite the following paper once it is published:

Díaz Iturry, Matthies, Pe'er, Vedder (in review) "AquaCrop.jl: A Process-Based 
Model of Crop Growth" Journal of Open Source Software