WARM: a Scientific Group on Rice Modelling

This paper is an open letter aiming at inviting all researchers and technicians working on rice and/or on modelling aspects that can be related to rice to participate to a scientific exchange group. The WARM (Water Accounting Rice Model) model is currently the result of an unofficial cooperation among researchers working at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (IPSC, Agrifish Unit – MARS STAT Section), at the Department of Crop Science of the University of Milan, at the Experimental Institute for Industrial Crops of Bologna and at the Institute for Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment (IREA-CNR) of Milan. The aim of this scientific exchange is the development of a simulation model for flooded rice able to manage all the main aspects influencing crop production (e.g. crop behaviour, pests, weeds). WARM is an original model with several innovative features aiming at reproducing the peculiar conditions of mid latitudes paddy fields (e.g. floodwater effect on vertical thermal profile). The WARM software has some interesting technical features which can support the user or the developer in the calibration and testing activities. The most important ones are the tools for the automatic calibration (based on the simplex method) and for the statistical evaluation of model performances. The results obtained from this collaboration encouraged us to enlarge the group through this invitation to all those people who are interested in testing the model, further improving existing modules and developing new ones, and/or sharing the data. We believe that sharing knowledge coming from people working on different aspects of rice research is the only way to develop a complete and powerful rice model.JRC.G.3-Agricultur