Evaluation Of The Aquacrop Model To Simulate Rice Growth Under Different Water Regimes In Bangladesh.

Due to high consumer needs in the populous Bangladesh, food security and self-sufficiency demand that current rice productivity levels are at least maintained or rather increased in the future. However, there are ongoing pattern changes in the climate of the country, which poses extra challenges. Precipitation patterns are shifting, existing irrigation water resources are stressed, and adaptive measures will likely be necessary to meet food production needs. In order to explore potential adaptive pathways to sustain or increase rice production while increasing water use efficiency, a 2-year dry-season (boro) irrigation experiment has been set up at the research farm of the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) with three treatments: (a) continuous standing water, (b) irrigation 3 days after water disappearance, and (c) irrigation 5 days after water disappearance. The experiment was set up on bunded plots, allowing testing the performance (calibration and validation) of the 1-D AQUACROP simulation model in order to facilitate simulation-based scenario studies using this model. Model performance was examined using five commonly used performance measures that showed reasonable fit of the model to the recorded irrigation water need, canopy cover, biomass production and grain yield. When further tested for varied local field conditions, this widely applicable, user friendly and easy-to-parameterize simulation model may become a tool that helps increase the capacity of local rice growers to adapt to climatic and potentially other (e.g. economic) changes to the crop production environment.