Abstract
The growing demand for sustainable agriculture is raising interest in intercropping for its multiple potential benefits to avoid or limit the use of chemical inputs or increase the production per surface unit. Predicting the existence and magnitude of those benefits remains a challenge given the numerous interactions between interspecific plant-plant relationships, their environment, and the agricultural practices. Soil-crop models are critical in understanding these interactions in dynamics during the whole growing season, but few models are capable of accurately simulating intercropping systems. In this study, we propose a set of simple and generic formalisms (i.e. the structure and mathematical representation necessary for designing a model) for simulating key interactions in bi-specific intercropping systems that can be readily included into existing dynamic crop models. This requires simulating important processes such as development, light interception, plant growth, N and water balance, and yield formation in response to management practices, soil conditions, and climate. These formalisms were integrated into the STICS soil-crop model and evaluated using observed data of intercropping systems of cereal and legumes mixtures, including Faba bean-Wheat, Pea-Barley, Soybean-Sunflower, and Wheat-Pea mixtures. We demonstrate that the proposed formalisms provide a comprehensive simulation of soil-plant interactions in various types of bispecific intercrops. The model was found consistent and generic under a range of spring and winter intercrops (nRMSE = 25% for maximum leaf area index, 23% for shoot biomass at harvest, and 18% for grain yield). This is the first time a complete set of formalisms has been developed and published for simulating bi-specific intercropping systems and integrated into a soil-crop model. With its emphasis on being generic, sufficiently accurate, simple, and easy to parameterize, STICS is well-suited to help researchers designing in silico the agroecological transition by virtually pre-screening sustainable, manageable intercrop systems adapted to local conditions.
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Data availability
The data used in this study is available in a Zenodo archive (Vezy et al. 2023c). The parameter values are all available from the specific input files for each species, soil, site, meteorology, and crop management.
Code availability
The source code of STICS and the code needed to replicate the simulations, statistics, and figures of this study are available in open access from a Github repository (https://github.com/VEZY/STICS-IC-paper) and replicated on the Zenodo archive (Vezy et al. 2023c). The simulations, parameter value optimizations, analyses, and graphical visualizations were performed using the “SticsRPacks” suite of R packages (Vezy et al. 2023b).
The new version of STICS included 177 commits with a total of 220,978 additions and 108,471 deletions. The changes were applied to the source-code of the STICS version 8.5, and the formalisms are planned to be included in the upcoming version of STICS in the coming months, in order to provide a version 11 of the standard STICS model.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Mme Tilly Gaillard for her professional English reviewing of the manuscript.
Funding
This research was supported by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program in the framework of the ReMIX (Redesigning European cropping systems based on species mixtures, https://www.remix-intercrops.eu/) project from 2017 to 2021 [grant number 727217], and the IntercropValuES (Developing Intercropping for agrifood Value chains and Ecosystem Services delivery in Europe and Southern countries, https://intercropvalues.eu/) project starting from 2022 [grant number 101081973].
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Conceptualization, RV, EJ, SM, ML, and NG; methodology, RV, EJ, SM, ML, and NG; software, RV, PL, DR; validation, RV; formal analyses, RV; investigation, RV; resources, EJ, NG, SM; data curation, NG, SM, RV; writing—original draft, RV, EJ.; writing—review and editing, RV, EJ, SM, ML, and NG; visualization, RV; supervision, EJ; project administration, EJ; funding acquisition, EJ.
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Vezy, R., Munz, S., Gaudio, N. et al. Modeling soil-plant functioning of intercrops using comprehensive and generic formalisms implemented in the STICS model. Agron. Sustain. Dev. 43, 61 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13593-023-00917-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13593-023-00917-5