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What is AquaCrop?
AquaCrop is a crop water productivity model developed by Food Agricultural Organisation,
Rome. It is a menu driven program.
AquaCrop differs from other models for its relatively small number of parameters. It is explicit
and mostly intuitive and maintains an optimum balance between simplicity, accuracy and
robustness. AquaCrop is aimed at practical end-users: farmers and irrigation associations,
extension services, governmental agencies, NGOs, planners, economists as well as
researchers and students.
AquaCrop is a tool for:
Predicting crop production under different water-management conditions
(including rain fed and supplementary, deficit and full irrigation) under present and
future climate change conditions.
Investigating different management strategies, under present and future climate
change conditions.
The model runs on daily time-steps using either calendar time or thermal time. It
accounts for three levels of water-stress responses, for salinity build-up in the root
zone and for fertility status.
AquaCrop is useful for crop planning and management.
It is useful for developing irrigation strategies under water deficit conditions.
It is particularly useful for perspective studies as it includes biomass and yield
predictions under global warming and elevated CO2, i.e., it is suitable for climate
change types of studies.
Practical applications AquaCrop can be used as a planning tool or to assist in management
decisions for both irrigated and rainfed agriculture. AquaCrop is particularly useful to
understand the crop response to environmental changes (educational tool)
to compare attainable and actual yields in a field, farm, or a region;
to identify constraints limiting crop production and water productivity
(benchmarking tool);
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to develop strategies under water deficit conditions to maximise water
productivity through;
irrigation strategies: e.g. deficit irrigation;
crop and management practices: e.g. adjusting planting date, cultivar
selection, fertilization management, use of mulches, rain water harvesting;
to study the effect of climate change on food production, by running
AquaCrop with both historical and future weather conditions;
for planning purposes, by analyzing scenarios useful for water administrators
and managers, economists, policy analysts and scientists.
Where to get AquaCrop
The AquaCrop software can be downloaded from the official site of FAO and the link for
downloading the software is: http://www.fao.org/nr/water/aquacrop.html
AquaCrop – Conceptual Framework
The AquaCrop takes into account the parameters of atmosphere covering Climate – rainfall,
temperature, wind, RH etc, details of crop like ETo, canopy cover, leaf expansion and soil
covering rooting depth, moisture HC.
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It also takes care of the management practices like yield response to water, crop yield which
is directly proportional to consumptive water use by crop.
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The conceptual framework is explained in diagrammatic format as shown below:
The main components are
soil– plant–atmosphere and
the parameters driving
phenology, canopy cover,
transpiration, biomass
production and final yield.
Continuous lines indicate
direct links between variables
and processes.
Dotted lines indicate
feedbacks.
Symbols (1), (2), (3), (4),
water stress response
functions
The input required to run AquaCrop model are:
Weather data
Crop
Irrigation
Field management
Soil and ground water characteristics
In addition to the requited input mentioned above the sowing or planting date, simulation
period and condition at the start of the simulation are required to run the AquaCrop model.
Where to get the data
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The user specifies in the Main menu the sowing date, the simulation period and the
appropriate environmental, initial and off-season conditions and these data can be retrieved
from the input file and if it is not available, the default settings in the software can be
assumed or you can select a project file containing all the required information for that run.
What will you get
The user can track changes, while running the simulation run on
Soil water
Salt content
Changes in crop development
Soil evaporation and transpiration rate
Bio mass
Yield development
Water productivity
What are the default settings
When AquaCrop is launched it selects a default crop and soil file. No other files (files are
‘(None)’) are selected.
In the absence of climate, irrigation management, field management, groundwater, initial and
off-season conditions files, the default settings are assumed
The default input can be altered by selecting input files, by updating the default settings in
the corresponding menus or by altering the characteristics retrieved from the input files or by
creating input files
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Environment Remarks
• A default minimum and maximum air temperature,
• An ETo of 5 mm/day,
Climate • No rainfall and
• An average atmospheric CO2 concentration of 369.47
ppm
Crop Generic crop data
Rainfed cropping assumed
Irrigation Management
Irrigation can be scheduled
No specific field management conditions.
Field management
Field surface practices does not affect soil evaporation or
surface run-off
Soil Deep loamy soil
Ground water Absence of a shallow ground water table
Simulation Remarks
Period The simulation period covers the growing cycle completely
At the start of the simulation it is assumed that in the soil
profile
Initial conditions
(i) The soil water content is at field capacity
(ii) Salts are absent
No specific field management conditions are considered
outside the growing period.
Off-season conditions
When running a simulation there are no irrigation events and
mulches does not cover the field surface in the off-season
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