Matteo Kruijssen, 2016, Operations Research and Financial Engineering

Matteo Kruijssen ’16

Crop production experienced a rapid increase during the Green Revolution (1960-1980), a time of widespread adoption of better crop management techniques. However, this production has recently stalled. Given a quickly rising world population and climate change, the ability to accurately predict crop yields and to optimize management practices is becoming increasingly important. Models currently exist to predict crop yields, but the impact of factors such as nitrogen and water stress on these models remains largely unknown. The goal of our project was to explore in depth one of these models, the Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT) program, to evaluate its ability to help determine optimal management practices and to identify potential weaknesses that can be improved upon. This summer, I was in charge of exploring the DSSAT code and performing a sensitivity analysis test to determine which variables are most important for a plant’s growth. I learned a lot about the biological processes that occur during plant growth, and I will be continuing this project during the school year to understand some strange results we observed over the summer. Moving forward, I may even incorporate this project into my senior independent research project.