A digital twin for arable and dairy farming

Summary

The Digital Future Farm (DFF) is a modeling framework that allows models of arable and dairy farms to be assembled from sub-models such as crop, soil and livestock models. The DFF is also a digital twin (DT): a model of a physical object with emphasis on (1) the connection between the real-world object and its virtual counterpart and (2) the use of real-time data from sensors to keep the model synchronized. In this study, an Ensemble Kalman Filter was used to synchronize a grass model and a potato model in the DFF with observations made in experiments. Results indicate that special care must be taken to prevent divergence of the Ensemble Kalman Filter when it is used with a crop growth model.