New APSIM paper on GxExM interactions

Following a recent visit to QAAFI, UQ by Diego Rotili (Universidad de Buenos Aires), a new paper “Untangling genotype x management interactions in multi-environment on-farm experimentation” has been published which may be of interest to the apsim community.

In field crops, yield and farmers’ profits and risks depend on the interactions between genotype (the “seed”), management (for example, how many seeds are sown per hectare) and the environment (the specific site and seasonal conditions). The environment is usually variable and difficult to predict prior to sowing, when farmers decide on a combination of genotype and management. Also, not every combination of genotype and management will perform well in every environment. That complexity means that efforts should be made to predict the environment to inform optimum combinations of genotype and management. In this paper the authors developed and tested a framework to predict the environment based on the water stored in the soil at sowing and inform optimum combinations of genotype and management, obeying to the predicted environment. APSIM, a crop simulation model, was used to test genotype and management options across multiple environments. Simple but efficient machine learning tools where used to analyse the results. A farmer that adapts the genotype and management to the predicted environment could have more profit and similar risk than a risk-averse farmer. The developed framework can be applied in other regions to improve farmer decision-making, profit and risk management.

 

It can be accessed via https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fcr.2020.107900