Large area crop monitoring and yield forecasting


This resarch line deals with the development of systems for in season crop monitoring, for supplying early warnings (e.g., unusual disease pressure, extreme weather events) and management support (e.g., agrochemical distribution, irrigation), and for providing timely estimates of yields and product quality.
These systems are developed by considering the peculiarities of cropping systems under specific agro-climatic and social contexts, as well as the spatial scale considered. The core of the Cassandra monitoring and forecasting systems is always represented by a dedicated modelling solution (or by a variety of solutions in case of multi-model simulations), with the possibility of assimilating remote sensing information.

Cassandra developed monitoring/forecasting systems
- for rice in Jiangsu (China) and wheat in Morocco (multi-model simulations) within the EU-FP7 project E-AGRI;
- for wheat in Hebei (China) during a collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS);
- for rice in Senegal and Sierra Leone (partially supported by the FIRST project SCENARICE);
- for sugarcane in Brazil;
- for rice in northern Italy (high resolution, also targeting qualitative aspects of productions and management support) within the EU-FP7 project ERMES.
Cassandra is currently contributing to the improvement (extreme weather events) of the crop monitoring and forecasting system of the European Commission (EU-FP7 project MODEXTREME) and developed most of the model components used since 2014/15 by the European Commission for the MARS monitoring/forecasting system.

2019 - Agricultural Systems, 168, 181-190
A high-resolution, integrated system for rice yield forecasting at district level.
Pagani, V., Guarneri, T., Busetto, L., Ranghetti, L., Boschetti, M., Movedi, E., Campos-Taberner, M., Garcia-Haro, F.J., Katsantonis, D., Stavrakoudis, D., Ricciardelli, E., Romano, F., Holecz, F., Collivignarelli, F., Granell, C., Casteleyn, S., Confalonieri, R.

2018 - European Journal of Agronomy, 97, 70-80
GLORIFY: a new forecasting system for rice grain quality in Northern Italy.
Cappelli, G., Pagani, V., Zanzi, A., Confalonieri, R., Romani, M., Feccia, S., Pagani, M.A., Bregaglio, S.

2017 - IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, 10, 5423-5441.
Downstream services for rice crop monitoring in Europe: from regional to local scale.
Busetto, L., Casteleyn, S., Granell, C., Pepe, M., Crema, A., Barbieri, M., Campos-Taberner, M., Casa, R., Collivignarelli, F., Confalonieri, R., García-Haro, J. ... Movedi, E., Nutini, F. ... Boschetti, M.

2017 - European Journal of Agronomy, 89, 97-106
Improving cereal yield forecast in Europe - the impact of weather extremes.
Pagani, V., Guarneri, T., Fumagalli, D., Movedi, E., Testi, L., Klein, T., Calanca, P., Villalobos, F., Lopez-Bernal, A., Niemeyer, S., Bellocchi, G., Confalonieri, R.

2017 - Agricultural Systems, 154, 45-52
Forecasting sugarcane yields using agro-climatic indicators and Canegro model: a case study in the main production region in Brazil.
Pagani, V., Stella, T., Guarneri, T., Finotto, G., van den Berg, M., Marin, F.R., Acutis, M., Confalonieri, R.

2015 - Agronomy for Sustainable Development, 35, 157-167
New multi-model approach gives good estimations of wheat yield under semi-arid climate in Morocco.
Bregaglio, S., Frasso, N., Pagani, V., Stella, T., Francone, C., Cappelli, G., Acutis, M., Balaghi, R., Ouabbou, H., Paleari, L., Confalonieri, R.

2015 - Biomass & Bioenergy, 80, 85-93
Are advantages from partial replacement of corn with second generation energy crops undermined by climate change? A case study for giant reed in Northern Italy
Cappelli, G., Yamaç, S.S., Stella, T., Francone, C., Paleari, L., Negri, M., Confalonieri, R.

2014 - Ecological Modelling, 286, 1-10
CoSMo: a simple approach for reproducing plant community dynamics using a single instance of generic crop simulators.
Confalonieri, R.

2014 - Environmental Modelling & Software, 59, 44-58
Model simplification and development via reuse, sensitivity analysis and composition: a case study in crop modelling.
Stella, T., Frasso, N., Negrini, G., Bregaglio, S., Cappelli, G., Acutis, M., Confalonieri, R.

2014 - European Journal of Agronomy, 59, 78-85
Evaluation of WARM for different establishment techniques in Jiangsu (China).
Pagani, V., Francone, C., ZhiMingWang, Qiu, L., Bregaglio, S., Acutis, M., Confalonieri, R.

2013 - Agronomy for Sustainable Development, 33, 393-403
Wheat modelling in Morocco unexpectedly reveals predominance of photosynthesis versus leaf area expansion plant traits.
Confalonieri, R., Bregaglio, S., Cappelli, G., Francone, C., Carpani, M., Acutis, M., El Aydam, M., Niemeyer, S., Balaghi, R., Dong, Q.

2013 - Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, 90, 170-175
A multi-approach software library for estimating crop suitability to environment.
Confalonieri, R., Francone, C., Cappelli, G., Stella, T., Frasso, N., Carpani, M., Bregaglio, S., Acutis, M., Tubiello, F.N., Fernandes, E.

2011 - Italian Journal of Remote Sensing, 43, 63-81
Estimation of rice production at regional scale with a Light Use Efficiency model and MODIS time series.
Boschetti, M., Stroppiana, D., Confalonieri, R., Brivio, P.A., Crema, A., Bocchi, S.