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Canegro Sugarcane Model ...

Introduction
Canegro is a mechanistic process-based sugarcane crop growth simulation model, developed at the South African Sugarcane Research Institute. It runs on a daily time-step, and is capable of estimating dry and fresh stalk mass yields, sucrose yields, water uptake and a number of other variables.

History
Canegro has been under ongoing development at the South African Sugarcane Research Institute (SASRI) since the late 1980s. The origins of Canegro lie with the CERES-Maize and CropGro models developed from the mid-1980s.

The need for a mechanistic sugarcane model was created by questions posed to SASRI (SASEX - the South African Sugarcane Experiment Station, at the time) by growers and millers in the South African sugar industry. Among the earlier applications of the model, which “defied conventional field experimentation” was determining optimum harvest age for sugarcane under the different agro-climatic regions within the SA sugar industry. Farmers had been forced to rethink conventional 18-24 month seasons because of the threat of damage by the Eldana stalk borer, which appeared to favour cane older than 12 months. This study required a sensitive, mechanistic model of the sugarcane canopy and carbon balance.

Model versions
Several versions of the Canegro model have been released.

The standalone SASRI Canegro model
The model was developed in standalone form, with its own formatted-text proprietary input and output file formats, until 2005. Model features and algorithms are described in Inman-Bamber (1991 and 1994 ), Singels and Bezuidenhout (2002) and Singels et al. (2010)

The DSSAT v3 Canegro model
The SASRI standalone model was adapted for use within the DSSAT v3 system in the mid-1990s, by adapting the input and output file formats to match those of DSSAT. The DSSAT v3 version of Canegro was not further developed, so improved model features were only available in the standalone SASRI version of Canegro thereafter.

The DSSAT v4.5 Cropping System Model (CSM) Canegro model
From 2006 onwards, SASRI adopted the modular DSSAT v4 Cropping System Model as the modelling framework in which Canegro would be situated. The standalone model's source code was analysed and then synthesised into CSM modules, each of which represents a plant growth or development process. Only the plant growth and development aspects of Canegro were incorporated into the DSSAT CSM; the soil water balance, and input and output routines, were effectively replaced with non crop-specific (common) routines in the CSM.