WOFOST - WOrld FOod STudies

WOFOST - WOrld FOod STudies

WOFOST (WOrld FOod STudies) is a simulation model for the quantitative analysis of the growth and production of annual field crops.

It is a mechanistic, dynamic model that explains daily crop growth on the basis of the underlying processes, such as photosynthesis, respiration and how these processes are influenced by environmental conditions. 

With WOFOST, you can calculate attainable crop production, biomass, water use, etc. for a location given knowledge about soil, crop, weather and crop management (e.g. sowing date). WOFOST has been used by many researchers over the world and has been applied for many crops over a large range of climatic and management conditions (see documentation). WOFOST is one of the key components of the European MARS crop yield forecasting system. In the Global Yield Gap Atlas (GYGA) WOFOST is used to estimate the untapped crop production potential on existing farmland based on current climate and available soil and water resources.

WOFOST originated in the framework of interdisciplinary studies on world food security and on the potential world food production by the Center for World Food Studies (CWFS) in cooperation with the Wageningen University & Research, Department of Theoretical Production Ecology (WAU-TPE) and the DLO-Center for Agrobiological Research and Soil Fertility (AB-DLO), Wageningen, the Netherlands. After cessation of CWFS in 1988, the DLO Winand Staring Centre (SC-DLO) has continued development of the model in co-operation with AB-DLO and WAU-TPE. 

Currently, the WOFOST model is maintained and further developed by Wageningen Environmental Research in co-operation with the Plant Production Systems Group of Wageningen University & Research and the Food Security unit of the Joint Research Centre in Italy.

This website serves as a reference point for information about WOFOST and also provides binaries and source code (if possible) for several implementations of WOFOST.

Principles of WOFOST

To be able to deal with the ecological diversity of agriculture, three hierarchical levels of crop growth can be distinguished: potential growth, limited growth and reduced growth. Each of these growth levels corresponds to a level of crop production: potential, limited and reduced production.

Reality rarely corresponds exactly to one of these growth/ production levels, but it is useful to reduce specific cases to one of them, because this enables you to focus on the principal environmental constraints to crop production, such as light, temperature, water and the macro nutrients nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K). Other factors can often be neglected because they do not influence the crop's growth rate.

More about the principles of WOFOST

Crop production levels

To be able to deal with the ecological diversity of agriculture, three hierarchical levels of crop growth can be distinguished: potential growth, limited growth and reduced growth. Each of these growth levels corresponds to a level of crop production: potential, limited and reduced production.  Reality rarely corresponds exactly to one of these growth/production levels, but it is useful to reduce specific cases to one of them, because this enables you to focus on the principal environmental constraints to crop production, such as light, temperature, water and the macro nutrients nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.

Potential production: Crop growth is determined by CO2 concentration, irradiation, temperature, plant characteristics and planting date only. Potential production represents the absolute production ceiling for a given crop when grown in a given area under specific weather conditions. It is determined by the crop’s response to the temperature and solar radiation regimes during the growing season. Atmospheric CO2-concentration is assumed to be constant. All other factors are assumed to be in ample supply.

Attainable (Limited) production: In addition to irradiation, temperature and plant characteristics, the effect of the availability of water and plant nutrients is considered. If the supply of water or nutrients is sub-optimal during (parts of) the growing season, this leads to water- and/or nutrient-limited production, which is lower than potential production in terms of total plant biomass. In special cases the water-limited yield (harvestable product) may be higher than potential yield because of more favourable harvest index.

Actual (Reduced) production: At this level, the possible reduction in crop yield by mostly biotic factors like weeds, pests and diseases is taken into account.

WOFOST distinguishes three levels of crop production:

  • Potential production: determined by crop variety, planting date, CO2 concentration, radiation and temperature;
  • Water-limited production, where water availability limits the
    potential production; For this purpose several waterbalance modules are
    available with different degrees of complexity and input data
    requirements.
  • Nutrient-limited production where nutrient availability limits the water-limited production.

Nutrient-limited production in WOFOST can be obtained through the use of the QUEFTS model which is basically a post-processing step of the water-limited production results. The other option is to use the (experimental) module for N/P/K limited growth which simulates plant uptake of N/P/K nutrient and allows to determine the impact of different schedules for nutrient applications during the growing season.

Further reducing factors (weeds, pests, frost and diseases) are not taken into account by WOFOST.

Temporal and spatial scale

From a spatial perspective WOFOST is a one-dimensional simulation model, i.e. without reference to a geographic scale. However, the size of a region to which WOFOST can be applied is limited. This is due to aggregation effects caused by non-linear response of crop models to model inputs. The non-linear behaviour implies that aggregating input data and then running the model provides different results compared to running the model on the original data and then aggregating the model output.

In practice, this is resolved by splitting the model spatial domain into small spatial units where the model inputs (weather, crop, soil, management) can be assumed constant. Aggregation of simulation results is carried out by aggregating the simulation results for the individual spatial units to larger spatial units. In Europe, WOFOST is typically applied at spatial units of 25x25 km for which scaling errors are negligible.

From a temporal perspective, WOFOST typically simulates crop growth with a temporal resolution of one day.

Crop growth stimulation

In WOFOST, crop growth is simulated on the basis of eco-physiological processes. The major processes are phenological development, CO2-assimilation, transpiration, respiration, partitioning of assimilates to the various organs, and dry matter formation. The following paragraphs provide a concise description of the main processes implemented in WOFOST.

Assimilation and respiration

The daily gross CO2-assimilation rate of a crop is calculated from the absorbed radiation, and the photosynthesis-light response curve of individual leaves. This response is dependent on temperature and leaf age. The absorbed radiation is calculated from the total incoming radiation and the leaf area. Daily gross CO2 assimilation is obtained by integrating the assimilation rates over the leaf layers and over the day.

Part of the formed assimilates is used for maintenance respiration of plant organs. The remaining carbohydrates are converted into structural plant material, such as cellulose and proteins (dry matter). There is some net loss of carbohydrates due to this conversion, called the growth respiration. Maintenance respiration is estimated on basis of the dry weight of the different organs and their chemical composition, modified by the ambient temperature.

Phenological development

The order and the rate of appearance of vegetative and reproductive organs characterize crop phenological development. The order of appearance is a crop characteristic, which is independent of external conditions. The rate of appearance can vary strongly, notably under the influence of temperature and photoperiod (day-length).

In WOFOST phenology is described by the dimensionless state variable development stage (DVS). For most annual crops, DVS is set to 0 at seedling emergence, 1 at flowering (for cereals) and 2 at maturity. The development rate is a crop/cultivar specific function of ambient temperature, possibly modified by photoperiod.

To account for the effect of temperature on development stage, the concept of thermal time is applied, sometimes called temperature sum or heat sum. Thermal time is the integral over time of the daily effective temperature (Te) after crop emergence. Te is the difference between the daily average temperature and a base temperature below which no development occurs. Above a certain maximum effective temperature, Te remains constant. DVS is calculated by dividing the thermal time by the thermal time required to pass to the next development stage.

The phenological development of some crops is also influenced by photoperiod. This phenomenon is treated in WOFOST through a photoperiod reduction factor for the development rate until flowering, based on an optimum and a critical photoperiod.

The development stage determines, among other things, the assimilate partitioning over the organs (leaves, stems, roots, storage organs), the specific leaf area and the maximum leaf CO2 assimilation rate.

Transpiration

Transpiration is the loss of water from a crop to the atmosphere. Water loss is caused by diffusion of water vapours from the open stomata to the atmosphere. The stomata need to be open to exchange gasses (CO2 and O2) with the atmosphere. To avoid desiccation, a crop must compensate for transpiration losses, by water uptake from the soil.

In WOFOST, an optimum soil moisture range for plant growth is determined as function of the evaporative demand of the atmosphere (reference potential transpiration of a fixed canopy), the crop group and total soil water retention capacity. Within the optimum range, the transpiration losses are fully compensated. Outside the optimum range, the soil can either be too dry or too wet. Both conditions lead to reduce water uptake by the roots, in a dry soil due to water shortage, in a wet soil due to oxygen shortage. A crop reacts to water stress with closure of the stomata. As a consequence, the exchange of CO2 and O2 between the crop and the atmosphere diminishes, and hence CO2-assimilation is reduced. WOFOST applies the ratio of actual over potential crop transpiration as a reduction factor to the gross assimilation rate.

Partitioning of dry matter

Partitioning is the subdivision of the net assimilates over the different plant organs. After germination, most assimilates are converted into leaf and root tissue and later into stem tissue. The partitioning to root tissue gradually diminishes and is zero if the development stage equals 1 (anthesis in cereals). From then on, the storage organs receive most of the available assimilates.

In WOFOST partitioning is implemented through so-called partitioning tables which describe the fraction of assimilates partitioned to the various organs as a function of the crop development stage. In the calculations, a fraction of the assimilates is assigned to the roots first, the remainder is divided over the above-ground organs (including below ground storage organs such as tubers).

Water balance

The moisture content in the root zone follows from the daily calculation of the water balance. In WOFOST four different soil water sub models are distinguished (depending on the implementation). The first and most simple soil water balance applies to the potential production situation. Assuming a continuously moist soil, the crop water requirements are quantified as the sum of crop transpiration and evaporation from the shaded soil under the canopy.

The second water balance in the water-limited production situation applies to a freely draining soil, where groundwater is so deep that it cannot have influence on the soil moisture content in the rooting zone. The soil profile is divided in two compartments, the rooted zone and the lower zone between actual rooting depth and maximum rooting depth. The subsoil below the maximum rooting depth is not defined. The second zone merges gradually with the first zone as the roots grow deeper towards the maximum rooting depth. This water balance applies to regional applications with limited information on soil properties.

The third water balance takes into account the impact of different soil layers and the influence of groundwater. This water balance uses a simple but elegant solution to estimate water flow through the soil taking into account both gravitational flow as well flow due to differences in matric suction. It is targeted at making good estimates of crop water availability under conditions when properties of the soil are well known, but without going into the complexity of Richards equation type of soil water models.

Finally, the WOFOST implementation connected to the SWAP model has a detailed water balance including solute transport which allows to make detailed simulations of the behaviour of water and solutes in the soil and its impact on plant growth.

Implementation of crop dynamics

WOFOST is a dynamic, explanatory model that simulates crop growth with time steps of one day, based on knowledge of processes at a lower level of integration. To ensure that the results of the simulation are correct, the different types of calculations (integration, driving variables and rate calculations) should be strictly separated. In other words, first all states should be updated, then all driving variables should be calculated, after which all rates of change should be calculated. If this rule is not applied rigorously, there is a risk that some rates will pertain to states at the current time whereas others will pertain to states from the previous time step.

In WOFOST, the calculations of rates and states are not mixed during a time step but are all executed separately. This is taken care of by grouping all the state calculations into one block as do all the rate calculations for the different components of the model.

Implementation of WOFOST

We provide several implementations of WOFOST in different programming languages (FORTRAN, python, java). Moreover, we provide the parameter sets required to run WOFOST for difference crops and a set of jupyter notebooks that demonstrate capabilities of PCSE/WOFOST.

Currently, four implementations of WOFOST are available from Wageningen University & Research:

  1. The original implementation in FORTRAN77. This implementation is still available, but is not actively maintained anymore.
  2. WOFOST implemented in the Python Crop Simulation Environment (PCSE);
  3. WOFOST implemented in the Wageningen Integrated Systems Simulator
    (WISS), a Java framework targeting the agro-ecological modelling domain;
  4. The Soil-Water-Atmosphere-Plant modelling system (SWAP).

All these implementations inherit their biophysical core from WOFOST 6.0, but differ in their abilities to deal with I/O (file, database), their user interface or general flexibility.

WOFOST 7.1

WOFOST 7.1 consists of the WOFOST crop model implemented in FORTRAN77, extended with a graphical user interface called the WOFOST Control Centre implemented in Borland Delphi (Only for Windows).

Advantages Disadvantages
Reference version of WOFOST, well tested and applied frequently; Batch runs relatively difficult to implement.
Graphical user interface makes the model relatively easy to handle: multiple runs over many years can be done easily, output can be visualized easily through WCC, statistics over multiple run can be calculated. Moreover, parameters can be adapted easily through the so-called 'Rerun facility' in order to determine their impact on the model output. Only options that are available through the user interface are easy to access. For more complex operations files will need to be edited manually and/or changes to the source code will be necessary.
Only file-based I/O (weather, crop and soil files

CGMS9.2

WOFOST 6.0 is one of the models implemented in the Crop Growth Monitoring System (currently operational  version 9.2). CGMS is implemented in C and designed to run crop models over a spatial domain, therefore CGMS integrates other functionality such as the ability to interpolate weather data over the spatial domain. All I/O in CGMS is implemented through a database which makes batch runs (many locations and years) easy. Moreover this database facilitates efficient data management.

Advantages Disadvantages
Spatial implementation of WOFOST (although each point is an independent WOFOST run). Fairly complex database structure which needs to be filled prior to running CGMS.
Batch runs can be implemented easily. Calculation of nutrient-limited production is not available in CGMS9.2
The WOFOST output can be retrieved from the database which makes analysing results relatively easy by sending the appropriate queries to the database. A user interface is available for running CGMS, but no functionality is available for analysing output. Nevertheless a suite of tools is available to visualize output from the CGMS database, but these are not included with CGMS.

Ownership of CGMS and related tools is with the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, therefore Alterra cannot provide CGMS executables nor source code. Nevertheless, binary distributions can be downloaded from the JRC ftp server. Access to the CGMS source code has to be requested with the Agri4Cast unit of JRC.

PyWOFOST

PyWOFOST is an implementation of WOFOST which reuses the kernel routines (the biophysical core) from the WOFOST 6.0 implementation in FORTRAN77. These routines have been compiled and linked with the python interpreter, while the logic of model execution and the input/output system have been implemented in the python language. This approach greatly increases the flexibility of the system and allows to make analysis that are neither possible with WOFOST 7.1.3, nor with CGMS9.2. Examples of such analysis are the use of model ensembles, assimilation of satellite observations through the ensemble Kalman filter or an optimization approach.

PyWOFOST uses many of the tables that are needed by CGMS, but tries to be more flexible in its output. For example, CGMS writes a fixed set of output variables to the database. Instead, PyWOFOST tries to infer the requested output variables from column names of the output table and writes this set of variables to the database. The development of PyWOFOST has been mainly sparked by scientific needs, nevertheless it could easily replace some of the functionality implemented in CGMS itself.

Advantages Disadvantages
Large flexibility through the use of an interpreted language; No user interface, PyWOFOST runs are handled by adapting the appropriate python scripts;
Large set of python extensions (numerical tools, plotting) that can be used to in combination with PyWOFOST; Limited support for plotting PyWOFOST results - a plotting tool with graphical user interface is under development though;
Batch runs are fairly easy to implement; Database structure needs to be filled although the database structure has been simplified compared to CGMS;
Support for distributed computing; Loss of performance: PyWOFOST is considerably slower then either the pure FORTRAN77 version or the version implemented in CGMS9.2. Nevertheless, support for distributed computing makes up for this;
Support for assimilating satellite observations. Some features of WOFOST6.0 have not been included in PyWOFOST because they were never used for regional modelling. Excluded features are the modelling of oxygen stress, modelling of nutrient-limited production and the water balance with groundwater influence.

SWAP

SWAP (Soil, Water, Atmosphere and Plant) simulates transport of water, solutes and heat in unsaturated/saturated soils and optionally uses the WOFOST6.0 model to simulated crop growth. The model is designed to simulate flow and transport processes at field scale level, during growing seasons and for long term time series.

Support WOFOST

We are limited in supporting others using WOFOST. Moreover, there is a considerable amount of documentation available through this website. So please read the documentation carefully before sending us trivial questions about WOFOST. However, in case of problems, please let us know and we will try to help you. Please contact the following people:

Online WOFOST

Online WOFOST is a fast way to run WOFOST for regions in the world where wheat, maize and soy bean are dominantly cropped using local relevant data.

Hands-on experience of WOFOST is possible via WOFOST-online. It is a fast way to run WOFOST for regions in the world where wheat, maize and soy bean are dominantly cropped using (as much as possible) local relevant data.

Register

This application requires a username and password that can be requested by sending an e-mail to the following address: hendrik.boogaard@wur.nl.

Data sets

Input is taken from the following global data sets:

  • Weather: ECWMF-ERA5,aggregated to daily timesteps and adapted to finer topography, finer land use pattern and finer land-sea delineation of the ECMWF operational model at 0.1 degree grid;
  • Soil: WISE30SEC version 1.0 (Batjes, 2015);
  • Crop: start and phenological related TSUM parameters based on regional GAEZ calendars;
  • Crop delineation: based on the Global Food Security Support Analysis Data (GFSAD) Crop Dominance 2010 Global 1 km;
  • Model: crop parametrisation as default WOFOST files.

    Important remarks

    • Results are given for two yield levels: potential (Yp) and water-limited (Yw). More information can be found on the Global yield gap atlas website.
    • Crop data has limited local relevance as it has been derived from
      regional calendars. Next release will include the possibilty to enter a
      location specific planting date and crop cycle length
    • Winter wheat simulation starts at the moment of “regrowth” (in spring)
    • The initialization of soil water, relevant for the water-limited
      simulation, starts halfway between field capacity and wilting point and
      runs 1 month before emergence.
    • The cumulated rainfall includes rainfall from the start of the initialization, thus 1 month before emergence.

    References