AquaCrop 6 | Page

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);

ClimaAdapt
AquaCrop 6 | Page

 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.

ClimaAdapt
AquaCrop 6 | Page

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.

ClimaAdapt
AquaCrop 6 | Page

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

ClimaAdapt
AquaCrop 6 | Page
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

ClimaAdapt
AquaCrop 6 | Page

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

ClimaAdapt