Global Optimization of Cultivar Trait Parameters in the Simulation of Sugarcane Phenology Using Gaussian Process Emulation

The global optimization of parameters in process-based crop models is often considered computationally expensive. Gaussian process (GP) emulation is a widely used method for reducing the computational burden of the optimization process. Total above-ground biomass and cane dry weight of three Thai sugarcane cultivars (KK3, LK92-11 and 02-2-058) collected under rainfed and irrigated conditions were used to optimize cultivar-specific parameters in the Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator (APSIM)-Sugarcane crop model through a GP emulation. GP emulators were trained and validated to approximate APSIM-Sugarcane model and then used for optimizing the cultivar-specific parameters through the differential evolution algorithm. Resulting optimized parameters allowed to obtain simulations that quite well approximated the observed biomass and CDW (validation results between simulated and observed yields: R2 0.93–0.98; normalized root mean squared error: 5–22%; Willmott’s agreement index: 0.87–0.99). The best parametrization was obtained under the lowest water stressed conditions. Based on these results, we suggest that GP emulation can be efficiently implemented for the parameterization of computationally expensive simulators.