The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) with the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), and in collaboration with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) organized a virtual training on the updated version of the PyAEZ Python package (PyAEZ v2.2) from 11 to 14 December 2023. The training was organized as part of the FAO’s Soil Land and Water Information System (SoLaWISe) project which aims to enhance crop yields sustainably while minimizing the impact on soil, land, and water resources amidst the challenges of climate change.

PyAEZ is a Python package equipped with computational routines related to the Agro-ecological Zoning (AEZ) framework. The package encapsulates the complex calculations in AEZ and tries to provide a user-friendly and intuitive way to input data and generate national AEZ information. PyAEZ provides a transparent set of procedures for land resources appraisal adhering to the established FAO Land Evaluation Framework. 

The PyAEZ package is of particular interest to national and international organizations dealing with different aspects of agriculture production and sustainability, land and water resources, food security, agricultural development, or climate variability and climate change. National and sub-national applications of PyAEZ may provide important information to support land use planning and can assess alternative cropping options to enhance the utilization of land resources.

In December 2023, an updated version (v2.2) of PyAEZ has been released and can be downloaded from the PyAEZ GitHub Repository (https://github.com/gicait/PyAEZ).

The objective of this 4-day training is to introduce the updated version of PyAEZ tool (PyAEZ v2.2) to professionals with the purpose of supporting policy and planning exercises related to land-use planning and management. In this training, an overview of AEZ methodology for crop suitability assessment, including theoretical aspects as well as previous case studies, and ongoing PyAEZ routines development will be covered.