WOFOST (WOrld FOod STudies) is a simulation model for the quantitative analysis of the growth and production of annual field crops. It is a mechanistic model that explains crop growth on the basis of the underlying processes, such as photosynthesis, respiration and how these processes are influenced by environmental conditions.
With WOFOST, you can calculate attainable crop production, biomass, water use, etc. for a location given knowledge about soil type, crop type, weather data and crop management factors (e.g. sowing date). WOFOST has been used by many researchers over the World and has been applied for many crops over a large range of climatic and management conditions. Moreover, WOFOST is implemented in the Crop Growth Monitoring System which is used operationally to monitor arable crops in Europe and to make crop yield forecasts for the current growing season.
WOFOST originated in the framework of interdisciplinary studies on world food security and on the potential world food production by the Center for World Food Studies (CWFS) in cooperation with the Wageningen Agricultural University, Department of Theoretical Production Ecology (WAU-TPE) and the DLO-Center for Agrobiological Research and Soil Fertility (AB-DLO), Wageningen, the Netherlands.
Currently, the WOFOST model is maintained and further developed by Alterra in co-operation with the Plant Production Systems Group of Wageningen University (http://www.pps.wur.nl/UK) and the Agri4Cast unit of the Joint Research Centre in Italy (http://mars.jrc.it/mars/About-us/AGRI4CAST).
CGMS-WOFOST is one of the 14 models following the ISIMIP2a protocol which form the base of simulations for the ISIMIP2a agricultural sector outputs; for a full technical description of the ISIMIP2a Simulation Data from Agricultural Sector, see this DOI link: http://doi.org/10.5880/PIK.2017.006
