At the beginning of the summer the general topic of my research project was on “identifying climate hotspots in agricultural regions of Vietnam”. However, some issues have arose which would prevent me from carrying out research on this topic remotely here in Ireland. This is just part and parcel of research and it can’t all be plain sailing, so I am not too disappointed with this news. Instead I am working even harder on my new topic title which is on “evaluating the performance of the DSSAT crop model in response to shifts in climate variability experienced in maize growing areas of Vietnam”.
Crop models are vital cogs in the battle for food security in the face of climate change. They can accurately predict how future soil, weather and crop management practices can alter the yield of a particular crop in a particular area.
I am working closely with my IRRI supervisor Sridhar Gummadi in creating a database that can be input into the DSSAT crop model, which will be calibrated and run to show how accurate the model is in predicting maize crop yields in the Northwest and Central Highlands region of Vietnam for the period of 2001-2010, when compared against observed yields.
The next few weeks are going to be spent generating a database containing soil, weather and crop management data which are the minimum requirements to run DSSAT.
Wish me luck!