​UPF professor presents climate information tools at international event

Currently, agriculture's main challenge is to feed the world and keep it economically and socially sustainable. Seasonal meteorological variability is known as a primary source of risks in agricultural production. The main causes of drops in production are associated with both a lack of humidity and excessive rainfall. Other sources of production risk, such as incidence of pests and diseases, are also highly related to climate variability. Furthermore, the challenges posed by climate change are increasingly significant.

Many efforts have been made to develop solutions, based on crop simulation and pest/disease models, to help producers make decisions, understand agricultural phenomena and reduce production costs by reducing unnecessary use of pesticides, increasing the sustainability of its operations and minimizing risks. At the University of Passo Fundo (UPF), these climate information tools are developed by the Mosaico research group, which has achieved good results.

International event
To report on the work developed by the research group, the professor of the IT courses and the Postgraduate Program in Applied Computing, Willingthon Pavan, was invited to speak at an international event, the Apec Climate Symposium 2016. This event brings together, Annually, around 100 scientists, decision makers and politicians from around the world come together to discuss emerging issues in climate prediction and its applications. This year, the APEC Climate Symposium focused primarily on the issue of food security. The event has been organized since 2005 by the Asia-Pacific economic cooperation, which is made up of 21 member countries of the Pacific circle.

Discussions on the topic began on September 16th, with the participation of researchers who highlighted topics related to food security, agriculture, climate change, fishing, public-private relations and international cooperation. After technical-scientific debate, the Ministers of State of the 21 countries continued with discussions and political projects and, finally, the presidents of each country were present at the event, which ended on Tuesday, September 27th.

The UPF professor participated in Apec 2016 between September 16th and 18th and was the only Brazilian to be present and speak at the meeting. On the occasion, Pavan explained about the research carried out at UPF that produced tools to aid decision-making in relation to the variables involved in food production and agriculture, based on climate information. “Studies of possible climate changes are one of the main points of preparation. Our work helps the producer, technician and researcher to make decisions related to production, in the short, medium and long term”, he notes.

Research
The UPF Mosaico research group has been carrying out studies on this topic since 1999 and has developed software and structures for simulating insect/pest and disease models. “The group seeks to develop, in a generic and coupled way, crop models with the aim of improving the estimation of crop yield under different scenarios”, explains Pavan, highlighting that the group’s experience has shown that helping producers, in the use and understanding of climate forecasts, it helps to reduce production risks and adapt management practices to the expected climate, increasing their capacity to face potential climate impacts on agricultural production.

Crop simulation models, according to the professor, operate based on physiological processes that describe the crop's response to soil, management conditions and the environment. “Results from simulation models can be used to predict changes and detect trends in biophysical indicators such as crop yield, nutrient adsorption, nitrate leaching, and soil carbon levels,” he comments, highlighting that these Crop models can facilitate efficient analysis of issues related to agricultural production.

The application of crop models in risk assessment is being considered to optimize management for spatially variable areas. “These applications require accurate crop models capable of concurrently simulating the crop, insects and diseases. Models based on simple growth functions can be used to describe outbreaks, but not to explain biological processes. Personalized models can be built from this starting point to include biological processes, such as the compartmentalization of affected individuals into different compartments”, he concludes.