Multi-model evaluation of phenology prediction for wheat in Australia

Daniel Wallach, Taru Palosuo*, Peter Thorburn, Zvi Hochman, Fety Andrianasolo, Senthold Asseng, Bruno Basso, Samuel Buis, Neil Crout, Benjamin Dumont, Roberto Ferrise, Thomas Gaiser, Sebastian Gayler, Santosh Hiremath, Steven Hoek, Heidi Horan, Gerrit Hoogenboom, Mingxia Huang, Mohamed Jabloun, Per Erik JanssonQi Jing, Eric Justes, Kurt Christian Kersebaum, Marie Launay, Elisabet Lewan, Qunying Luo, Bernardo Maestrini, Marco Moriondo, Jørgen Eivind Olesen, Gloria Padovan, Arne Poyda, Eckart Priesack, Johannes Wilhelmus Maria Pullens, Budong Qian, Niels Schütze, Vakhtang Shelia, Amir Souissi, Xenia Specka, Amit Kumar Srivastava, Tommaso Stella, Thilo Streck, Giacomo Trombi, Evelyn Wallor, Jing Wang, Tobias K.D. Weber, Lutz Weihermüller, Allard de Wit, Thomas Wöhling, Liujun Xiao, Chuang Zhao, Yan Zhu, Sabine J. Seidel

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

22 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Predicting wheat phenology is important for cultivar selection, for effective crop management and provides a baseline for evaluating the effects of global change. Evaluating how well crop phenology can be predicted is therefore of major interest. Twenty-eight wheat modeling groups participated in this evaluation. Our target population was wheat fields in the major wheat growing regions of Australia under current climatic conditions and with current local management practices. The environments used for calibration and for evaluation were both sampled from this same target population. The calibration and evaluation environments had neither sites nor years in common, so this is a rigorous evaluation of the ability of modeling groups to predict phenology for new sites and weather conditions. Mean absolute error (MAE) for the evaluation environments, averaged over predictions of three phenological stages and over modeling groups, was 9 days, with a range from 6 to 20 days. Predictions using the multi-modeling group mean and median had prediction errors nearly as small as the best modeling group. About two thirds of the modeling groups performed better than a simple but relevant benchmark, which predicts phenology by assuming a constant temperature sum for each development stage. The added complexity of crop models beyond just the effect of temperature was thus justified in most cases. There was substantial variability between modeling groups using the same model structure, which implies that model improvement could be achieved not only by improving model structure, but also by improving parameter values, and in particular by improving calibration techniques.

Original languageEnglish
Article number108289
JournalAgricultural and Forest Meteorology
Volume298
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 Mar 2021

Keywords

  • Australia
  • Evaluation
  • Parameter uncertainty
  • Phenology
  • Structure uncertainty
  • Wheat

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