News

Corn models combined for climate change prediction

University of Illinois scientists have married two types of crop models together to better predict the impact of climate change on crop yields.

Lead researcher Kaiya Guan tells Brownfield Ag News the first one is a computational model designed by agronomists for corn crops, “Those type of models are good at simulating crop growth but the model’s usually poor in simulating water cycles, energy cycles and photosynthesis.”

The other is called an “Earth system model” which has advanced ways of simulating water cycles, so they have combined the two for the best results, “And, as we know, that if we want to know crop stress – how crops respond to future and current environments, having a model that can do well in all these aspects (is) extremely critical.”

Guan says they are working to extend the combined crop model to predict the impact of climate change on other crops including soybeans and wheat.

Audio: Interview with Kaiya Guan~