An overview of new features and fixes

What’s new in PCSE 6.0

PCSE 6.0 has a number of breaking changes compared to the 5.5 release.

First of all, WOFOST 7.3 and 8.1 are released with PCSE 6.0. WOFOST 7.3 includes the atmospheric CO2 response and biomass reallocation. WOFOST 8.1 provides the full crop N dynamics. Moreover, this release also includes a new multi-layer waterbalance and a new Carbon/Nitrogen balance called SNOMIN (Soil Nitrogen module for Mineral and Inorganic Nitrogen). Furthermore, WOFOST 8.0-beta has been deprecated in the PCSE 6.0 release. This also implies dropping support for the simulation of P/K limitations on crop growth.

WOFOST 7.3 and WOFOST 8.1 are coupled to the new SNOMIN carbon/nitrogen balance and the new multi-layer waterbalance. Nevertheless the existing (simpler) water and nitrogen balances are also still available and in many cases highly relevant. For example, for educational purposes or in areas with little data available, a simple approach may be preferred. Therefore, with WOFOST 7.3 and 8.1 many combinations of crop/soil models are possible. In order to accommodate these combinations, the models in PCSE have been coded according to a certain system which follows the following rule:

<modelname><version>_<productionlevel>_<waterbalance>_<nutrientbalance>
The placeholders can be one of the following:
  • <modelname>: Wofost, Lintul, Lingra or any other model included

  • <version>: the respective model version consisting of a major and minor number, e.g. “72” for Wofost 7.2

  • <productionlevel>: an indication of the agro-ecological production level which can be one of “PP”: potential production, “WLP”: water-limited production or “NWLP”: nitrogen and water-limited production level.

  • <waterbalance>: the type of waterbalance used which can be either one of “CWB”: for classic (simpel) water balance or “MLWB” for the more complex multi-layer water balance.

  • <nutrientbalance>: the type of nutrient balance which can be either on of “CNB” for the classic (simpel) nitrogen balance or “SNOMIN” for the complex carbon/nitrogen balance.

Depending on the production level, the codes for the water balance and nitrogen balance can be omitted. For example, WOFOST 7.3 potential production will be coded as “Wofost73_PP”, while for the most complex WOFOST 8.1 variant the model coding will be: “Wofost81_NWLP_MLWB_SNOMIN”. The latter combines the WOFOST 8.1 crop dynamics with the multi-layer water balance and the SNOMIN Carbon/Nitrogen balance.

Further changes to the system consist of:

  • all data providers have been moved to pcse.input, except for the CGMS dataproviders residing in pcse.db.

  • All WOFOST 7.2 models have been renamed according to the coding schema above. So “pcse.models.Wofost72_WLP_FD” is now “pcse.models.Wofost72_WLP_CWB” although the old name will keep working in order not to break old code.

What’s new in PCSE 5.5

PCSE 5.5 has the following new features:

  • WOFOST version 8.0 (beta) has been included which has variants for potential (PP), water-limited (WLP) and nutrient + water-limited (NWLP) production. Note that dynamics for N/P/K are included in all model variants but for the PP and WLP variants the supply of N/P/K is assumed to be unlimited. Note that this a beta version because testing of the N/P/K limited growth against experimental data has so far been limited. Nevertheless, the dynamics for N/P/K are based on well known principles from other models and rely on the concept of dilution curves that define the maximum, critical and residual N/P/K concentration in the crop.

  • A full implementation of the LINGRA and LINGRA-N grassland simulation models are now included. This model allows to make estimates of productivity of rye grass.

  • WOFOST 7.1 has been upgraded to 7.2, this is mainly to be consistent with the updated system description for WOFOST at https://wofost.readthedocs.io. Old code that relies on importing WOFOST 7.1 will keep working though.

  • The WOFOST 7.2 phenology module can now be imported as a standalone model. This is useful when calibration is limited to phenology as it greatly increases the model performance.

  • The FAO Water Requirement Satisfaction Index is included as a model.

What’s new in PCSE 5.4

PCSE 5.4 has the following new features:

  • PCSE is now fully compatible with python3 (>3.4) while still remaining compatibility with python 2.7.14

  • The NASAPOWERWeatherDataProvider has been upgraded to take the new API into account

What’s new in PCSE 5.3

PCSE 5.3 has the following new features:

  • The WOFOST crop parameters have been reorganized into a new data structure and file format (e.g. YAML) and are available from github. PCSE 5.3 provides the YAMLCropDataProvider to read the new parameters files. The YAMLCropDataProvider works together with the AgroManager for specifying parameter sets for crop rotations.

  • A new CGMSEngine that mimics the behaviour of the classic CGMS. This means the engine can be run up till a specified date. When maturity or harvest is reached, the value of all state variables will be retained and kept constant until the specified date is reached.

  • Caching was added to the CGMS weather data providers, this is particularly useful for repeated runs as the weather data only have to be retrieved once from the CGMS database.

Some bugs have been fixed:

  • The NASA POWER database moved from http:// to https:// so an update of the NASAPowerWeatherDataProvider was needed.

  • When running crop rotations it was found that python did not garbage collect the crop simulation objects quick enough. This is now fixed with an explicit call to the garbage collector.

What’s new in PCSE 5.2

PCSE version 5.2 brings the following new features:

  • The LINTUL3 model has been implemented in PCSE. LINTUL3 is a simple crop growth model for simulating growth conditions under water-limited and nitrogen-limited conditions.

  • A new module for N/P/K limitations in WOFOST was implemented allowing to simulate the impact of N/P/K limitations on crop growth in WOFOST.

  • A new AgroManager which greatly enhances the way that AgroManagement can be handled in PCSE. The new agromanager can elegantly combine cropping calendars, timed events and state events also within rotations over several cropping campaigns. The AgroManager uses a new format based on YAML to store agromanagement definitions.

  • The water-limited production simulation with WOFOST now supports irrigation using the new AgroManager. An example notebook has been added to explain the different irrigation options.

  • Support for reading input data from a CGMS8 and CGMS14 database

Changes in 5.2.5:

  • Bug fixes in agromanager causing problems with crop_end_type=”earliest” or “harvest”

  • Caching was added to the CGMS weather data providers

  • Added CGMSEngine that mimics behaviour of the classic CGMS: after the cropping season is over, a call to _run() will increase the DAY, but the internal state variables do not change anymore, although they are kept available and can be queried and stored in OUTPUT.

What’s new in PCSE 5.1

PCSE version 5.1 brings the following new features:

  • Support for reading input data (weather, soil, crop parameters) from a CGMS12 database. CGMS is the acronym for Crop Growth Monitoring System and was developed by WEnR in cooperation with the MARS unit of the Joint Research Centre for crop monitoring and yield forecasting in Europe. It uses a database structure for storing weather data and model simulation results which can be read by PCSE. See the MARSwiki for the database definition.

  • The ExcelWeatherDataProvider: Before PCSE 5.2 the only file-based format for weather data was the CABO weather format read by the CABOWeatherDataProvider. Althought the format is well documented, creating CABO weather files is a bit cumbersome as for each year a new file has to be created and mistakes are easily made. Therefore, the ExcelWeatherDataProvider was created that reads its input from a Microsoft Excel file. See here for an example of an Excel weather file: downloads/nl1.xlsx.