Publications
FAO publications featuring AquaCrop
AquaCrop on the ground: Model applications for sustainable agricultural water management
17/03/2025
As the global challenges such as water scarcity, climate variability and the growing demand for food continue to rise, efficient agricultural water...
The AquaCrop model: Enhancing crop water productivity
01/01/2021
Water resources are linked to the global challenges of food insecurity and poverty, as well as to climate change adaptation and mitigation. In line...
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Crop yield response to water
01/01/2012
Abstracting from the scientific understanding and technological advances achieved over the last few decades, and relying on a network of several scientific...
Non-FAO publications featuring AquaCrop
A Hydrus–AquaCrop Coupling Modelling Approach for Optimizing Irrigation Strategies of Cotton in Xinjiang Salinized Farmland
2026
A critical challenge hindering the development of optimized irrigation schedules for crops is the difficulty in quantifying the coupled relationships among soil water, salinity and crop growth.
AquaCrop on the ground: Model applications for sustainable agricultural water management
2025
As the global challenges such as water scarcity, climate variability and the growing demand for food continue to rise, efficient agricultural water management has become a cornerstone of sustainable development...
AquaCrop: The FAO Crop Model to Simulate Yield Response to Water: III. Parameterization and Testing for Maize
2009
The first crop chosen to parameterize and test the new FAO AquaCrop model is maize (Zea mays L.). Working mainly with data sets from 6 yr of maize field experiments at Davis, CA, plus another 4 yr of Davis maize canopy data, a set of conservative (nearly constant) parameters of AquaCrop...
AquaCrop: The FAO Crop Model to Simulate Yield Response to Water: II. Main Algorithms and Software Description
2009
The AquaCrop model was developed to replace the former FAO I&D Paper 33 procedures for the estimation of crop productivity in relation to water supply and agronomic management in a framework based on current plant physiological and soil water budgeting concepts...
AquaCrop: The FAO Crop Model to Simulate Yield Response to Water: I. Concepts and Underlying Principles
2009
This article introduces the FAO crop model AquaCrop. It simulates attainable yields of major herbaceous crops as a function of water consumption under rainfed, supplemental, deficit, and full irrigation conditions. The growth engine of AquaCrop is water-driven...
AquaCrop: FAO’S crop water productivity and yield response model
2014
With the help of relatively few conservative crop parameters, AquaCrop simulates final crop yield in four steps that are easy to understand, which makes the modeling approach transparent. The steps consist in the simulation of development of the green crop canopy cover, crop transpiration, above-ground biomass, and final crop yield...