AquaCrop—The FAO Crop Model to Simulate Yield Response to Water: I. Concepts and Underlying Principles

This article introduces the FAO crop model AquaCrop. It simulates attainable yields of major herbaceous crops as a function of water consumption under rainfed, supplemental, deficit, and full irrigation conditions. The growth engine of AquaCrop is water‐driven , in that transpiration is calculated first and translated into biomass using a conservative, crop‐specific parameter: the biomass water productivity, normalized for atmospheric evaporative demand and air CO 2 concentration. The normalization is to make AquaCrop applicable to diverse locations and seasons. Simulations are performed on thermal time, but can be on calendar time, in daily time‐steps. The model uses canopy ground cover instead of leaf area…

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  Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers