Calibrating and testing APSIM for wheat-faba bean pure cultures and intercrops across Europe

Herman N.C Berghuijs,Stefano Tavoletti,Christoph Scherber,Eveline Adam,Martin Weih,Adrian C Newton,Alison J Karley,Giulia Vico,Lars P Kiær,Ángel M Villegas-Fernández,Wopke Van Der Werf

doi:10.1016/j.fcr.2021.108088

Abstract

Cereal-legume intercropping can increase yields, reduce fertilizer input and improve soil quality compared with pure culture. Designing intercropping systems requires the integration of plant species trait selection with choice of crop configuration and management. Crop growth models can facilitate the understanding and prediction of the interactions between plant traits, crop configuration and management. However, currently no existing crop growth model has been calibrated and tested for cereal-legume intercrops throughout Europea. We calibrated the Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator (APSIM) for pure cultures of wheat and faba bean using data from Dutch field trials, and determined the phenological parameters to simulate pure cultures and intercrops from seven field experiments across Europe. APSIM successfully reproduced aboveground dry matters and, for wheat only, grain yields in pure cultures. In intercrops, APSIM systematically overestimated the aboveground dry matter and grain yield of faba bean and underestimated those of wheat. APSIM was reasonably capable of simulating plant heights in pure cultures, but respectively overestimated and underestimated the height of faba bean and wheat in intercrops. In order to simulate wheat-faba bean intercrops better, APSIM should be improved regarding the calculation of biomass partitioning to grains in faba bean and of height growth in both species.

Highlights

Global food production needs to satisfy increasing demands while reducing its environmental footprint by lowering anthropogenic inputs and spillovers
Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator (APSIM) WHEAT The calibration procedure started with considering the effects of vernalization and daylength on the temperature sums required to reach different phenological stages (Zheng et al, 2015)
We set the sensitivity to vernalization to zero because this process is largely irrelevant for spring wheat

Summary

Introduction

Global food production needs to satisfy increasing demands while reducing its environmental footprint by lowering anthropogenic inputs and spillovers. One way to diversify is inter cropping, i.e. cultivating two or more species in the same field for a significant part of their growing period (Willey and Rao, 1980). Inter croppping can increase and stabilize crop yield and reduce the envi ronmental impact of arable farming (Malezieux et al, 2009). Cereals and legumes grown in intercrops may complement each other regarding nitrogen use. The cereal experiences less competition for nitrogen from a neighboring legume than it would from a neighbor of its own species. As a result of such mechanisms for complementarity, intercrops often – but not always – show overyielding (Yu et al, 2015, 2016; Martin-Guay et al, 2018; Li et al, 2020; Xu et al, 2020). Overyielding is defined as a situation where the land area

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