The first work package of the project, in close interaction with the second work package, is dedicated to the building and design of crop production systems enabling to ensure climate resilient, reliable, and sustainable production of crops by farmers.
The work package is structured in two streams. The first stream is dedicated to the determination of optimum cropping practices and use of technologies and crop varieties by farmers. The stream of activities builds on the outputs of the WP2 and focuses on the modelling of crop output taking into account local weather variability and environmental factors.
The model-based estimation of crop output will enable to provide estimations subject to different farm-level implementation of sustainable cropping practices such as conservation, crop rotations, and low-carbon agriculture as well as the use of different crop varieties and inputs. The second stream is focused on the coupling of farm-level optimum crop management and input combinations with river basin-level water management strategies.
The optimum solution design combining cropping practices implemented at the scale of river basins with water management infrastructure, will enable to reduce farmer and value chain risk of supply disruption in current and future climate scenarios.