International Crop Modeling Symposium Shows New Opportunities

More than 300 scientists from 47 nations met in Berlin, Germany, during March 15-17, 2016 to exchange ideas on improvement and application of crop simulation models to better predict agricultural production and food security under global climate change. The symposium was co-organized by MACSUR (Modelling European Agriculture with Climate Change for Food Security, http://macsur.eu/) and AgMIP (Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project, http://www.agmip.org/), and was locally hosted by the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) in Müncheberg, Germany.

During the 3-day meeting, there were a total of 85 presentations and 130 poster presentations.  There were plenary lectures by James Jones (University of Florida, USA; The next Generation of Crop Models), Serge Savary (INRA, Toulouse, France; Models for Crop Diseases), Graeme Hammer (University of Queensland, Australia; Modelling and Genetics), Andrew J. Challinor (University of Leeds, UK; Models and Climate), Brian Keating (CSIRO, Australia; Models and Cropping Systems) and Achim Dobermann (Director of Rothamsted Research). Closing plenary lecture was given by Prof. Martin Kropff (Director General of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, CIMMYT).

iCROPM2016 Symposium keynote presentations and abstracts are available at http://communications.ext.zalf.de/sites/crop-modelling/SitePages/Symposium%20Presentations.aspx