Clisagri: An R package for agro-climate services

• Main Authors: A. Ceglar, A. Toreti, M. Zampieri, V. Manstretta, T. Bettati, M. Bratu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2020-12-01
• Series: Climate Services
• Subjects: Climate service; Decision support; Winter wheat; Drought; Heat stress; Seasonal prediction
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405880720300492

Crop yields are affected by unfavourable/extreme weather and climate events occurring during sensitive growth stages. Understanding the risks associated with these events is essential to adapt agro-management decisions and reduce losses. For this purpose, we propose a targeted climate service integrating a dynamic crop phenology model with an approach based on dedicated agro-climate risk indicators. The initial set of these indicators has been developed in a co-design approach with agronomists and durum wheat farmers participating as end-users in the H2020-MedGOLD project. Four groups of indicators characterize drought events, excessive wetness, cold stress and heat stress during sensitive growth stages. The proposed approach has been fully implemented as an R-package named Clisagri. The package is complemented with a set of optimization functions, which target optimal variety selection in terms of crop cycle duration.